Zero Escape: Negative Control
by Number One Fan of Journey
Summary: Utami Kibowa awakes trapped in a building unlike the one she found herself in seven years ago. The Malefactor states that it will fill with poisonous gas that will kill her and the eight others in the building if they fail to escape in nine hours. What will it take for them to get out of the Nonary Game alive?
1. The First Room

Author's Note: Welcome to my _999_ fanfic. And I do mean _999_ , not _Zero Escape_. I've only played the first game; therefore, this is only based off the first game and could potentially clash with other installments.

I have tried to emulate the general game format, but there are of course certain limitations. As per the Terms of Service, _this is NOT a choose-your-own-adventure story_. It is a story with several alternate endings portraying the paths the main character, Utami, could choose to take. I, of course, cannot prevent you from jumping chapter to chapter to view the choices you personally would have made (when enough of the endings are available for you to consider such a thing), but that is not the intended format of this story. Do note that because of my chapterization strategy based on Utami's choices, chapter lengths will be inconsistent.

There is a possibility that I will make the puzzles appearing in the story playable using the Ace Attorney Online game generator. Let me know if you're interested; I probably won't bother otherwise.

Now that all of that is out of the way, enjoy! I _do_ so love feedback of all levels if you have a moment. I also find reviews inspiring, if you catch my drift.

* * *

Utami thought she smelled barbeque. The scent tugged at her mind, drawing her mind out of the haze swamping her consciousness. After a moment's hesitation, she shook off her desire to sleep in and opened her eyes.

The red of her eyelids gave way to a lit room with a foreign ceiling.

"Why is the ceiling so close...?"

She carefully sat up, bending her wrists to push away covers. But there were no covers. Instead, the mattress beneath her had a plain white fitted sheet and nothing more.

"What the heck? There's no way I kicked off _all_ of my sheets."

She peered over the wooden sidebar of the bed to check before jerking back. "Whoa!"

Instead of carpet at the edge of the bed, black-and-white tiles covered the floor some ten feet below.

This clearly wasn't her room. Whose was it, then? How had she ended up here? Try as she might, she couldn't recall what had happened before she last fell asleep.

"That would be a pretty bad sign if I were the type—" She broke off coughing, the smell of smoke burning at her nostrils and throat.

Smoke. Burning. Of course. That was what had woken her up in the first place. Wherever she was, it didn't seem like the best place to stay.

She shuffled to one end of the bed and went down a few of the thin, wooden slats running down the side before she let herself drop to the floor. Her feet thudded onto the tile as she cast a glance around. The twin-sized bunk bed above her was continuous with a desk of equal size with a lone briefcase on its surface. Another bed/desk stood at the other side of the room a few steps away, a small cushioned chair pushed into the appropriate space.

The far wall of the room was a series of blocks painted white, with a large metal plate bolted across its center. At the border with the ceiling, too far from the desks to reach from the bunk bed, was a vent pouring out vile, red-black smoke. If she couldn't get to it, she certainly couldn't plug it up.

"At least the fire's not in this room..."

That hardly meant she didn't need to leave, though. The smoke may have only obscured the ceiling now, but her eyes were watering just from one breath of it. She couldn't afford to stick around until enough built up to asphyxiate her.

Utami spun around to check the other side of the room. Two closet areas were on either side, one with clothes hanging on the pole, the other with a few things on the upper shelf. Between the two cut-outs was a door.

"There we go."

She lunged for the handle and twisted it.

Or, at least tried to.

"Unngh..." As much as she strained, all she got from the door was the rattling of the deadbolt. "Shoot. It's locked."

Somehow she'd had the feeling that it would be, even though there were no chains or knobs to turn. The door was plain wood, the handle metal with some sort of plating surrounding it. Normal enough.

But next to it, up against the white blocks of the wall, stood a small, square shelf. On its surface was bolted something like a thick smartphone with a green screen. It was dully lit, with four white ovals spaced across it in a downward curve.

"This must be what's keeping the door closed."

Utami glanced behind her—the smoke was still pouring in, although she could still peek over the bunk bed railings safely if she needed to—before tapping at the screen to see if any sort of keypad came up. The screen flashed:

ERROR

PLEASE PLACE FINGERS ON DESIGNATED SPACES ONLY

"...So it's a fingerprint scanner?"

Could it really be that easy? Holding her breath, she placed her right fingertips sans thumb on the scanner.

ERROR

UNAUTHORIZED PRINTS

Although she doubted it would do any good, she tried her left hand next. The same message appeared.

"But I'm the only one in here. How am I supposed to use someone else's fingerprints?" Maybe there was some way to short out the machine?

Whatever the solution, this was the only room she had access to. The way out had to be in here somewhere.

She glanced around the entire room one more time—closet, bunk bed, far wall, bunk bed, closet, door—before taking a deep breath.

 **SEEK A WAY OUT!**

Utami went to the briefcase first. It would be too easy if it was already unlocked, but she had to at least check it out. It was a shiny, leathery black with a handle and a three-digit lock currently set at 9-9-9. No other locks or keyholes were visible, and the square buttons on either side of the handle wouldn't depress.

"A three-digit code, huh? I haven't seen any numbers around here yet."

She set the briefcase back down onto the desk and began to search the drawers. The three on the right were unlocked, but only the top drawer held something. It was a small, blue file binder.

"Hey, something that isn't locked." She slipped the magnetic flap off its resting place on the front cover and opened the file. A single paper was nestled in the right pocket, entitled "Digital Roots."

Utami froze, a wave of cold sweeping across her shoulders and chest.

"Digital roots..." Her voice came out in a rough whisper, though she wasn't sure if it was due to emotion or remnants of smoke in her throat.

She was very well aware of what a [digital root] was. The sum of two or more numbers, always between 1 and 9. If the sum had more than one digit, the digits were added together until the result was a single digit. That was a [digital root].

"Is that what this is about...?"

She looked back at the door, the lock, the suitcase—the obvious puzzles. She had set about to leave the room without giving it a second thought. But that was what this was, wasn't it?

"The [Nonary Game]."

Her hands shook as she raised her left arm. She hadn't noticed it before since she normally wore a watch over her loose sleeve, but there it was. The [bracelet]. The back was the same design as always, no clasp, no strings that could simply be cut. The face showed a single digit: [3].

She lowered her arm, shutting her eyes in an attempt to dismiss the images that raced across her vision. The REDs. The DEADs. The [numbered doors].

Finally, a tickle in her nose brought her back to her current situation. She covered her nose with her elbow before she could sneeze.

Nonary Game or not, she had to get out of here while she could still breathe. Now wasn't the time for reminiscing. There were puzzles to solve.

Utami slapped the file shut and returned to the desk. Coughing lightly, she investigated the drawers on the left, each one slamming open as she yanked it a bit too hard. A plain key was in the middle drawer. The only clue to its function was the number [3] carved into the diamond-shaped head.

"That's my number... I'll have to hang onto this."

She gripped it and moved to the larger bottom drawer. It wouldn't open. Of course not. It was the only drawer of this desk that _could_ be locked, so it almost had to be.

"I guess this is worth a shot." She shifted her grip on the key in her hand and put it to the keyhole. It wouldn't even start to go in.

"Too easy, huh?" She took a step back. The key to that drawer would be somewhere else. But where to check next...?

She peeked under the desk—dark but empty—before swiveling her head. Might as well check the beds before they were completely covered in smoke.

First, the one she had been sleeping on. Nothing under the sheet or the pillow. She couldn't pull the mattress up. On the other side of the room, she covered her mouth with a fistful of hoodie to ward off the smoke. The search was a little slower with one arm occupied, but right under the pillow lay a piece of paper. She snatched it without another thought and climbed back down to clear air. Sputtering, she unfolded the single crease and looked over the contents.

ICHIROU YUUSUKE MOMO

"I know these names."

There were three of them. Maybe...

Utami hopped off the bottom rung onto the ground and stood there until she was able to breathe normally. The desk was right in front of her. Might as well be next.

She examined the top of the desk, but nothing was on it but a lamp with no compartments.

"The surface feels more slick in some places..." She ran her fingers across the dark blue speckles again. "I can't make out anything, though."

Removing her hands, she strained to reach back to the lamp switch. The bulb came to life with a click, bringing much-needed light to the wide desk.

"Huh? I think there's some sort of pattern."

She got on her tiptoes, the extra-shiny spots shifting, and then she dropped into a crouch. Finally, across the plain surface, a gleam showed the words "I=5."

"I equals five? That's not some weird type of hexadecimal thing, is it?"

She made a mental note of it before clicking the lamp back off. Next she searched the left drawers—her [3 key] wouldn't fit in the lock—then the right. In the top drawer was a small, stumpy, silver key.

"Maybe this will do it." She ducked to the other side and put the key into the slot at the bottom drawer. It slid in, but it wouldn't turn.

She frowned at the keyhole for a while before spinning around and trying the other desk. The key turned.

"Yes!"

The drawer opened to show a book-sized black box that Utami snapped up immediately. The lid came off without any fuss, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Inside lay something like a floppy thimble just about the color of her skin. Instead of little bumps, it just had tiny ridges on one side. On the other, "R" was written in fine-point black marker.

Beneath the rubbery thing was a slip of paper, folded in half. Utami picked it up and flipped it open.

"M=9"

She folded it back up. "More of that code, I guess."

Another sting of hot air parched her throat, and she coughed, looking up at the ceiling. She couldn't make out the top of the room anymore, and the smoke had made it down to the centers of the mattresses. Whatever was pumping smoke in wasn't about to stop.

Utami reflexively put her left palm over her mouth, the cloth there blocking out some of the acrid taste, before she froze.

She had done the same thing earlier.

It came flooding back to her. The grenade of white gas thunking to the floor of the bedroom she shared with her brother. The door slamming shut and refusing to open. Utami dropping her book and covering her mouth and nose as her brother continued to struggle with the door. The white haze building in the air, then in her mind. Her shoulders thumping to the floor before she whited out completely.

It hadn't been like the first time. This was how she must have ended up in here today.

Who had done this? She had only glimpsed a hand and a very blurred silhouette. Nothing she could identify.

Why would someone drag her into this again, almost seven years later? Was this another test? Was her brother here?

She certainly wouldn't find out if she drowned on the smoke in here.

Taking as deep of a breath as she could, she turned to the nearest closet. She could barely reach the shelf, so she ended up tugging the blue-and-white striped blanket down too hard to catch it before it hit the ground. It brought the smell of smoke down, but she suppressed her cough as she unfolded the cloth. Nothing. Maybe she was supposed to shove it in the vent? There was no way she could move the entire bed/desk combo to get over there, though.

She turned to the clothes rod and looked it over, even though nothing hung from it.

"Huh? It's kind of loose."

With a grunt, she pulled one end away from the wall, and the other soon followed. She looked through the tube and only saw a small obstruction.

"I can't reach it." Instead, she tilted the pole upright, letting the contents slide onto her palm. Another one of those rubbery thimble things. This one had an "I" written on it.

"An 'I' and an 'R'..." She frowned. The letters didn't mean much at this point. But she was sure she could figure it out.

With another paranoid check of the smoke building up above her, she hurried across to the other closet. Her fingers brushed nothing on the shelf, and a climb up the side of the desk just showed her the empty, white plank of wood. She turned to the hanging clothes. None of them stood out to her but the silky shirt that had halfway slipped off its wooden hanger. She rearranged it, seeing if anything would, shift, but nothing happened.

"Wait a second..."

A black mark was on the near side of the hanger, and a second look at the other clothes showed similar marks.

"I probably have to arrange these, don't I?"

The smoke continued to dim the fluorescent lights as she hurried to arrange the clothes in any order that made sense. Finally she was able to line up the black marks. Stretched across the seven hangers was the message "Y=8."

"That's the third one of those. It's definitely not hexadecimal, or any other weird base. At least, nothing too weird for me to understand."

She looked over the clothes again before pausing. Arranged as they were, the various styles of shirts were a smooth gradation from red to blue—except for one bright purple jacket at the far right end. Utami plucked it from its place and dug through its pockets. One was empty. The other held another little silver key.

"Three guesses where this goes."

Deciding the other shirts were probably a waste of time, she turned back to the unopened desk drawer and unlocked it. The white-and-purple speckled drawer liner was only interrupted by a blob of flesh-colored rubber.

"Another one of these... There's a 'P' on the back this time. 'R,' 'I,' 'P'... Well that doesn't sound good."

She checked the far wall, but nothing seemed out of place besides the steel panel.

"This probably used to be a window. I don't see anything attached to it."

That just left the briefcase. Utami stared hard at the three dials before retrieving the largest slip of paper she had.

ICHIROU YUUSUKE MOMO

"Three names, three numbers. This has to be it. Wait..." She squinted at the names.

"Ichirou, Yuusuke, Momo... Ichirou, Yuusuke, Momo... I-chirou, Y-uusuke, M-omo. I, Y, M."

She reviewed the few wild minutes she had spent in this room before turning the dials.

5-8-9...

 _Click_.

"All right! Let's see what we've got." She flung the lid open. The interior of the briefcase was dark and velvety and held a piece of paper as well as a rubbery thimble.

"Yet another one of these. This one has an 'M' on it. And this paper..." She skimmed over the contents, and her stomach turned.

They were the rules. She probably knew them by heart.

"I can read them later. Right now I have to get out of here."

Shoving the paper into her file, she looked over what she had left. The [3 key], the file, and the four rubbery things.

"I have to use a fingerprint scanner to get out of here. So, I won't be using the key. As for these things..."

Utami picked up the one marked "R" and slipped it onto her finger, twisting it so the ridges were on the front.

"I think I get it now."

She scrutinized the other three and put the obviously small one over her pinky. It was the one marked "P."

"Wait a second..."

She took the other rubber fingertip off and arranged the three remaining—"I," "M," "R," and then "P."

"All right. Let's see what happens."

File tucked under her arm, she hurried to the door and examined the fingertip scanner. Carefully, she stretched her fingers to let one hover over each oval on the screen. With an exhale, she pressed down. A line of white light crossed the screen from top to bottom.

ERROR

UNAUTHORIZED PRINTS

"What?!" She drew back, checking her artificial fingerprints. They were in the correct order, weren't they? Index, middle, ring, pinky?

But were they on the correct hand?

Fumbling, Utami coughed as she pulled the tips off and transferred them to her left hand in the same order. This was the hand with the [bracelet]. It made sense, right?

She put her fingers on the scanner and waited.

AUTHENTICATION SUCCESSFUL

DOOR OPEN

She pulled back, gripping the door handle and wrenching it down before it had the chance to lock again. Finally she let out a breath as the door swung open in front of her.

 **YOU FOUND IT**


	2. The Other Eight

Utami burst out of the door, slamming it shut behind her before the smoke could snake into whatever room she had entered. Panting for breath, she finally paused to take a look around. The lighting was dim, but she was near the end of a row of doors like hers, and more doors appeared to be straight across. The two hallways were joined by a square room bigger than the bedroom, with computers lined up against the inner wall and a couch and tables in the rest of the carpeted space.

Were these dorms? The rooms were bigger than the one she had to put up with at college.

After a moment she realized the poor lighting was due to more smoke. Even with her door closed, the black cloud was roiling above her, threatening to cover the tops of the door frames.

"Hey!"

She jumped before looking down her hall again. Standing just outside one of the doors was a man with bleached orange hair that was halfway covered with a baseball cap. He wore a dark grey T-shirt under a forest green vest, neither of which was tucked into his jeans.

"Ichirou?" Utami gasped and hurried over to him.

"Good to see you safe." He patted the top of her hair.

"You, too." She followed her brother as he started towards the lobby area. "Although it's not good to see you _here_."

He frowned, staying a pace ahead of her. He may not have given a direct response, but that was nothing unusual. It was clear enough that he agreed and wasn't terribly happy about the situation they had found themselves in.

"Did you find your key?" He fished into a vest pocket and pulled out a key with a diamond-shaped head. It was engraved with a [4].

Utami couldn't help glancing at his bracelet to find that it matched. With a slow exhale, she showed him her own key.

Ichirou nodded a "good" and kept walking.

As they turned the corner to the other hallway, Utami heard murmuring. Other people were here. Seven other people, more than likely. Who all had been dragged into this game with her? It was a relief to have her brother by her side, but she still wished he didn't have to go through this. Not again.

The light continued to get dimmer, more stray wisps of smoke making her eyes water, as she and her brother stepped up to the group.

"Three and Four," Ichirou called.

One of the others standing there turned around. Utami couldn't make out much detail, but the shape of his hair and his beak-like nose reminded her of a [falcon].

"Good, good," Falcon said, although he was frowning with his hands deep in his pockets. "We're still missing Seven's key, though."

A girl wearing a midriff-exposing shirt with a huge, white [star] sighed, her index finger pushing into the side of her cheek. "What's taking that guy so long?"

"He _does_ have to solve a fairly complicated puzzle," said a boy. Utami couldn't make anything out but the shine on his circular [glasses]. "We, uh, can't all be geniuses, right?"

Utami shifted, wiping some tears from just under her eye. "Are we sure the Seven person is okay? Is smoke filling all of the rooms at the same rate?"

A [blonde] that appeared a bit older than her shrugged her shoulders. "We have no way to tell. We just have to wait until we have all of the keys." She coughed. "Either that, or whatever the heck is going on here is gonna be very short."

"All of the keys?" Utami echoed. One of the others, a pretty [big guy], stepped aside so she could get a better look at the door. A three-by-three grid of keyholes was just above the push bar. All but three of them were occupied.

"I'll put ours in," Ichirou volunteered, taking her key and nudging his way to the door. Big Guy couldn't quite get out of the way in time and ended up stumbling into Falcon. A loud, double slap of a sound was followed by the flutter of falling paper.

"Hey, watch it!" Falcon ducked down before Big Guy had a chance to react. Ichirou apologized, but Falcon just shook his head as he righted his file and kicked Big Guy's towards him.

"Sorry." He picked up his own file and replaced the sheet of rules.

"What's the deal with these, anyway?" Falcon waved his own paper in the air, suppressing a sneeze. "I only skimmed them, but they sound pretty screwed up."

"Can't argue with that," replied a man with [slicked-back] hair. "I reckon we won't be able to tell until we get out of here and find some of those doors."

As he finished speaking, the sound of a door slamming open pounded Utami's ears. Most of the people present, her included, turned to see a boy gasping for breath. He stood doubled over by the farthest door in the hallway.

"Number seven!" Star called. "Give us your key, come on!"

"Key?" he echoed hoarsely, his painfully green [gloves] still gripping his knees hard.

A frown crossed Ichirou's face. "Middle drawer, left desk!"

Gloves came them a thumbs up before attempting to take a deep breath and rushing back into his room. Slick, the tallest of anyone there, was already ducking down to keep his head out of the smoke. It didn't keep him or anyone else from having to cough, though.

Sputtering and stumbling, Gloves surged out of his room, waving his key in front of him. Falcon dove in to take it and darted back, thrusting it into the last empty keyhole. An audible click came from the door.

"Come on!" Big Guy helped Gloves over as Ichirou grunted loudly and slammed into the door, forcing it open. With a gasp for air, Slick launched himself through first, followed by Star and Glasses. Utami was caught up in the fleeing group and nearly fell down the first set of stairs a few steps beyond the door. As the fresh air coursed through their lungs, the crowd began to calm down, and she was able to grip the handrail as they went down a flight to the next door. It was unlocked.

Star pushed through first. Slick followed and held the door open for the rest of them, probably to make up for his initial mad dash. Eyes still watering and the acrid taste of ashes still on her tongue, Utami hurried out into the large room, far enough no one would have to run into her to get out of the stairwell.

She didn't hear the door shut, but she was sure everyone had come through. Smoke didn't cloud the ceiling in this room, so they finally had a chance to catch their breath. Aside from occasional coughing, the room fell silent for a few minutes.

Big Guy was the first to speak. Although Utami's eyes hadn't quite recovered, she could see him a lot better now in the light. He had shoulder-length brown hair and a crooked nose. His bright orange and white jacket reminded her of some sort of HAZMAT suit, although its coverage was pretty normal. He was still just as big as he seemed at first, although he looked the same age as her, if not a bit younger.

"So..." He was still trembling with adrenaline, but his hands were behind his neck in a pose that tried to be relaxed. "What just happened?"

Slick responded with a faint smile, though it looked more natural on his face than a bigger grin would. "We walked out of a door and down some stairs." He adjusted the popped-up collar of his open blue jacket, underneath which was a white netted shirt. He couldn't have been more than ten years older than Utami, but she still thought the near toplessness was pushing it.

Big Guy blinked, taken aback and clearly not sure how to respond.

"Did you read the note in the briefcase?" Blondie adjusted the red hair sticks in her tiny top bun, the majority of her short hair loose. She wore a kimono-like peach shirt with red dots and a plunging neckline. "It's probably the most explanation we're going to get."

He shook his head. "I just wanted to get out of that room."

"All right, class," droned Glasses. "Turn to page 1 and let's get started." He whipped out his own piece of paper, which he had apparently crumpled in the pocket of his acid-washed jeans. His somewhat dressy blue shirt, its sleeves rolled up, had no pockets.

If Utami had been able to see him better in the hallway, she certainly would have dubbed him "Scar" instead. The way his curls of dark brown hair were pushed to the side, she could easily see the thin scar that curved from his forehead to his left cheek before taking a sharp turn downward for another inch.

Around him, the others had taken out their own pieces of paper, their faces ranging from blank to anxious to frightened. Utami went ahead and retrieved her own, in case anything else had changed about this Nonary Game.

Gloves felt the need to read the paper aloud.

"This building is equipped with several [numbered doors], the appearance of which is obvious. These doors can only be opened by a group of three to five people whose [digital root] is equal to the number on the door. Your number is the digit appearing on the [bracelet] on your left wrist. These bracelets cannot be removed until you are dead or have left the building."

Utami's gaze flashed to the bracelet. It still said [3].

"You will register your bracelets using the [RED] affixed to the side of each [numbered door]. Once you enter, you must use the identical [DEAD] within. If you enter a room and do not register on the DEAD, the detonator in your bracelet will activate, and the bomb I planted deep within your digestive tract will explode, killing you."

Glasses crossed his arms over his stomach, looking queasy.

Gloves's voice shook as he continued. "You will encounter many of these doors... But the only exit from this building is marked with a [9]. Seek the way out."

The room fell silent, each of them staring at the sheets of paper and each other. All Utami could hear was the tense pulse in her ears as she tried not to choke on the smoke lingering in her throat.

This was it. This was the Nonary Game.

Falcon had gone much paler than Utami would have expected, his knuckles turning just as white as his hands clamped either edge of his open jacket. "What's the meaning of this...?"

"It means what it says." Star's face was unnaturally serious, her dark high ponytail dead still. "We're trapped unless we find the door with a 9. And our lives are at stake."

Big Guy took a few steps back, as if it would distance him from the rules of the game. "I-I don't believe it... I can't... What?!"

"Let's get it over with." Ichirou took calm, measured steps to the center of the room, and Utami took a good look at her surroundings for the first time since she had stepped in.

The walls were mostly unfinished brick, goopy-looking mortar creeping through every crack. The same white blocks in the dorm room came up around the corners but came up to the brick in jagged, somewhat decorative lines. A few round, white tables were scattered about, another one folded up against the wall. Plastic chairs in blacks, blues, and yellows were against the walls and around the tables. On one side was a short counter made of the same ruddy bricks as well as a series of metal panels bolted to the wall. The wall behind her was bare of everything but a few decorative paintings and a rough, papery sculpture of a woman with wings and no head. The stairwell door was the only thing on the third wall.

Behind Ichirou were two doors with a familiar metal sheen. On one was painted a [7] in a splatter of red. The other door held a [2] in the same style.

"Numbered doors," Glasses muttered, his gaze on them as well.

"I can't believe it." Slick gritted his teeth, his hands in the pockets of his slacks. " _Bombs_? In our stomachs?"

Utami shook her head. "If they were in our stomachs, we could vomit them out. They have to be as far as the small intestine."

Blondie gave her a look. "How are you so sure?"

"I'm a bio major?" Utami grinned, but Blondie didn't seem to find it funny. Shaking her head, Utami sighed. "Whoever abducted us for this game knows what they're doing. We were probably unconscious more than long enough for that someone to make us swallow the bomb, and for it to make its way far enough through the GI tract."

Some of the others exchanged worried looks, and Utami realized she didn't know if the others had been abducted in the same way.

"You were knocked unconscious, too, then?" Glasses started.

The nine in the room started to exchange stories:

All of them had been rendered unconscious by a grenade of white gas in their homes. No one had gotten a good look at the attacker.

"I saw a little more of him than you guys did, though." Star frowned, her eyes squeezed shut. "His face was covered with a gas mask, but he was wearing some sort of off-white cloak."

"How big was he?" Slick tried.

"It was hard to tell. I was already losing consciousness by then..." She sighed, her eyes sliding open. "Sorry."

Ichirou shrugged it off. "Let's worry about getting out of here first."

"Uh, actually..." Gloves's eyes flickered from person to person, his spiked-up black hair quivering. "There's another piece of paper on that table, so maybe... we should look at it?" He adjusted his short-sleeved, white jacket. "I don't know."

Almost in unison, they turned to the circular table in the middle of the room. The piece of paper barely stood out from the surface.

Utami hurried over to the paper to read it herself.

"Nazi gas chambers..." She took a deep breath, trying not to cough. "Nazi gas chambers used large amounts of hydrogen cyanide to kill their victims. The process took twenty to thirty minutes to kill every victim in the room.

"So it will be with this building in nine hours.

"Seek a door that carries a [9] if you wish to avoid such a cruel fate.

"Signed, The Malefactor."

She lowered the piece of paper, the others remaining silent before suddenly breaking into speech at once, their voices blending together.

"How dare someone try to copy something like that!" - "A gas chamber? This building is a _gas chamber_?" - "We could really die like that?!" - "What on earth?!" - "Who's this Malefactor? What do they want?! What do they have against us?!"

Then a roar finally broke through the din.

"That's enough!" Falcon slammed a fist on the table nearest him, the resulting rattle dying off along with the voices of the other eight. The [8] on his wrist shone as he brought it towards his chin. "This thing is supposed to be a detonator? Well, I can fix that. One less cause of death to worry about."

"What?!" Star jumped, stumbling as she tried to recover. "How stupid are you?! The bomb will go off if you try something like that!"

Falcon's face broke into a vicious grin, although it had lost none of its pallor. In one swift motion, he removed a small screwdriver and two tips from his belt. "I'm a mechanical engineer. If anyone can pull it off, it's me."

He investigated his bracelet, front and back, before picking a screwdriver tip with sweat-slick fingers. "Heck, my kids could probably work it out. They're following in my footsteps, of course. The both of them are pretty sharp, too, if I do say so myself."

As he worked the thin edge of the slotted tip between the front and back faces of the bracelet, Utami's pulse hammered harder and harder. The nausea in the pit of her stomach was due to more than the smoke she had swallowed. This wasn't a good idea. This _wasn't_ a good idea.

Still, she held her tongue. Falcon's job was stuff like this, right? Maybe he could disable the detonators. Then all nine of them could go from door to door as they pleased, with no worry of anyone—

A deep boom shook the floor as something warm smacked into Utami's cheek.


	3. Names and Numbers

Author's Note: I still love reviews! Let me know how I'm doing.

* * *

The moment that followed was a blind and silent one. Utami could not sense time passing. She could only smell the savory and sickly sweet scent of charred flesh and organs, and feel the little patches of dampness and heat on her skin and clothing. She could see the scene before her but was entirely unable to process it.

Then finally, after a few seconds or minutes or hours, a scream dragged her out of her trance. Her thoughts were still sluggish, and it took some time for her to find the source.

Ichirou had dropped to his knees, his hands clapped over his mouth and the visible portion of his face contorted in pain. Blood had flecked his hat and shirt, but nothing more appeared to cling to him. Regardless, he continued to scream, one burst of sound after another, like some kind of emergency alarm. His wide eyes were locked on the smear of red not far in front of Utami. Without thinking, she followed his gaze.

Specks of blood nearly reached the numbered doors, but only when they drew nearer to the epicenter of the blast did they begin to accumulate into thicker and thicker drops before becoming one solid sheet of red. The larger chunks of unrecognizable flesh, weight hindering them from flying too far, were scattered in the muck like the last few pieces of cereal in a bowl of milk.

Falcon's body was, in one word, twisted. The force of the blast had splintered bones long and flat, turning his legs into a spiraling mess. His lower ribs had been thrust upward, shattering those above them and forcing them into the heart and midsection was a mess of shiny pink and globular yellow, the visible posterior spikes of his spine wrenched around to face the ceiling. Some mass of ungodly human shrapnel had torn into his face, making it an unrecognizable mash-up of skin and bone.

His arms had perhaps sustained the least damage, though they were still wrenched around, skin torn off in various places. The forearms were more singed and blown apart, but the bracelet still clung to his wrist. The back had retracted, making it removable, but it was so embedded into the bloody flesh of his forearm that it couldn't be freed without effort. Its face was gone—probably Falcon's own work rather than that of the blast—and the display was cracked and lifeless.

Utami felt numb and hollowed-out, her limbs immovable dead weights. Her brother was still screaming, although his cries of shock and fear were growing weaker. It was an odd thing, to hear such a quiet man scream his throat raw. Yet it somehow fit. No normal reaction to this situation was reasonable. No calm, or sarcasm, or lightheartedness. A man was dead, his remains spattered across everyone Utami could see without moving her head. No sane reaction would have been appropriate.

So she continued to stand stock-still, adrenaline blurring her vision as her stomach continued to twist and churn in dismay. As if from some distance away or through water, a faint voice reached her ears.

"What the hell…"

Slick was leaning back as if the explosion had prevented him from standing straight. He rubbed a hand over his bracelet but couldn't pull his gaze away from Falcon's corpse.

"There…" Glasses continued to hug his stomach. "There really are bombs…"

Star rubbed her bare arms compulsively. "Is. Is there a shower somewhere? I. I can't." She sucked in a breath and coughed it back out.

"The dorms." Blondie's expression was blank as she nodded towards the stairwell. Star hurried towards the propped-open door before Blondie continued. "But do we have time?"

Utami gripped her bare wrist, pressing it to her chest in a vain attempt to comfort herself. "The Malefactor… He's made good on his threats so far." She attempted to add something else but couldn't find the air to do so.

The bombs were real. Whether or not they were last time, she had never known. But for this Nonary Game… The stakes were as high as they purported to be. No questions asked. She and her brother could die here. Everyone could. And everyone would if they stayed until the poison gas began to seep in.

Utami struggled to keep her vision from going black. There wasn't time. There wasn't time...

As if summoned by her thoughts, a bell began to ring.

 _Ding-dong-ding-dong... Ding-dong-ding-dong... Ding-dong-ding-dong... Ding-dong-ding-dong._

 _Dong... Dong... Dong...  
_

The last tone rang twelve times before the room fell silent again. Utami couldn't tell where the sound had come from. This seemed like some sort of school, so it could have been over a PA system. It didn't really matter.

"So is it—" Big Guy gripped what portion of his bulky arms he could—"I-is it noon or midnight?"

"We don't really have a way to tell, do we?" Glasses rubbed a finger across the scar in the middle of his face. "We've, um, all been unconscious."

"And the windows are all barred down." Swallowing, Gloves glanced from person to person. "Right?"

Blondie let out a breath, resting her hands on her hips. "Probably. This 'Malefactor' wants us to go through the numbered doors. Being able to jump out a window to freedom wouldn't be very conducive to that."

"And he wants us to get through them all in nine hours?" Slick ground his teeth, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "We'd better get going if we don't all want to..." His breath caught, and he shot the briefest glance at Falcon's dead body.

"Names."

The voice was so raw Utami wasn't able to place it until her brother repeated himself. He had returned to his feet and regained some composure, but the abject horror in his eyes had yet to fade.

Utami averted her gaze. This was hard enough without seeing Ichirou so badly shaken. "It will be a lot easier to communicate if we know each other's names." Casually, she turned to Glasses. "I mean, I don't just want to say, 'Hey, Scar! Blah, blah, blah.' Seems kind of—" she swallowed—"insensitive or something, right?"

Glasses's brow furrowed. "But you already said it?"

"But that was just an example. Doesn't count." She tried to grin, though her lips were still trembling.

He continued to give her a strange look before shaking his head. "Maybe I don't want to give my real name to a bunch of strangers. For all I know, one of you could be The Malefactor."

Utami tensed, silence once again buzzing in her ears. Those in the room exchanged a few stares, switching to another target when they were caught.

"That doesn't make any sense." Star frowned, still paused by the stairwell door. "Why would he put himself in blatant danger like that?"

Slick let out a breath, straightening his spine. "Maybe his bracelet doesn't have a detonator."

"You all can theorize all you want, but I want names." Utami's own outburst surprised her as seven pairs of eyes turned on her. "Real names, code names, whatever you want. Just, _please_ , let's get going. I... I want out of here. I'm sure you all do, too."

The next patch of silence was broken by Gloves.

"Okay, I got it." He nervously adjusted the cloth at his wrists. "Any chance we could pick them based on our bracelet numbers? Just so it's easier to remember who's what..." Frowning, he scratched the back of his head.

"I won't stop you." Blondie adjusted the sash around her waist, the large bow in the back centering a bit better. "Go right ahead."

Gloves jerked back. "Me? Already? Okay, um... I'm number [7], so..." He hurriedly stuck out his wrist, the digit on his bracelet confirming his claim. "Seven is, like, supposed to be lucky or something, right? So I can be... Lucky?"

"Okay, I get it." Big Guy held out his own arm, jitters shaking the [9] on his bracelet. "Everybody knows th-that 'nein' is 'no' in German, right? So, I'll be German."

"I've got the loneliest number over here." Slick ran one hand through his hair to smooth it as he held out his bracelet. His number was [1]. "One person is all you need to play a [solo], so how about you call me that?"

Star spun the collection of thin bracelets on her right wrist, producing a ringing rattle. "And two makes a pair, so that can be my name."

Twisting the silver spade on his necklace, Glasses snorted. "We're supposed to call _you_ that, when you haven't got a pair?"

"Excuse you!" Thrusting her arms down, Star puffed her cheeks out in anger. "First of all, you're dumb. Second, it's not like that. As a matter of fact, you can write my name down as [Pear], like the fruit. Better?"

Glasses just waved a hand. "What makes you think I'm writing it down?"

Pear pointedly turned her back to him and showed off the [2] on her wrist to everyone else in the room.

"How about you?" She nodded at Ichirou.

He paused, still pale but not shaking. After a moment of thought, he replied, "Zirconium."

"Zirconium? The heck?" Lucky drew back in surprise before checking the other man's watch. "What does that have to do with four?"

Ichirou held out his wrist. "Atomic number 40."

"40? That's not even four."

Utami glanced at Lucky. "The digital root is."

He didn't seem to have a comeback. His only muttered response was, "Who knows that off the top of their head, anyway?"

"I can't come up with anything good," said Glasses, displaying his [5] watch. "I'll just go with Five."

"Let's see..." Blondie looked up at the ceiling as she held her left arm out. Past the edge of the draping sleeve was a [6]. "Six is [hex] in Latin or Greek or something, right? That sounds enough like a name for me."

"Greek," Utami answered without thinking or being asked. She looked at her own bracelet. [3] in Greek would be "tri." Tri... Triceps? Trigeminal?

"Cera," she said. The others frowned before she swallowed, playing with one of the little braids framing her face. "You know, like, short for 'triceratops'."

No one seemed to have any qualms with that.

"Why couldn't we have done it in order?" sighed Lucky, folding his arms. "It'll be harder to remember like that… Sorry. Ignore me."

"There's no need for that." Pear twirled a strand of loose hair between her fingers. "It's not like we can't go over them again."

Utami nodded before doing so mentally.

[1] was [Solo], the tall man with slicked-back hair. Bracelet number [2] belonged to [Pear], the one with the high ponytail and the white star on her chest. Utami herself was [3], with the codename [Cera]. Ichirou was number [4], [Zirconium]. The boy with the glasses and long scar was [Five]. The [6] bracelet went with [Hex], the blonde woman with the polka-dotted kimono shirt. [7] was [Lucky], the boy with the bright green gloves. [8]…

[8] was no longer in play after the explosion had ripped Falcon apart. And finally, [German] was the name chosen by the big guy with the [9] bracelet.

Utami gave the others a bit of time to get their names down before shifting her feet. "Can we go through some doors now?"

"The [numbered doors], huh?" Solo looked over the red splatters of paint. "That all sounds good and well, but we didn't give the rest of the stairwell that good a look."

Hex crossed her arms, frowning in thought. "I don't hold great hopes for those areas, but it couldn't hurt."

"We'll have to split up to get through the doors, anyway." Five interlaced his fingers and stretched his arms. "Why not go three ways?"

German wrung his hands. "Break up the party right from the start? That... really doesn't feel like a good idea to me."

"It's our only option," Utami said. "Like Five said, we can't all go through one of those doors, since there are more than five of us. We don't have much time, so we might as well explore all our options at once."

Ichirou—Zirconium—clapped his hands together. "Who's going where?"

Pear pressed a finger to her cheek in thought. "We can try to calculate every combination that could possibly open the doors... We want to check both, right?"

"I'll just have to trust your math," Lucky sighed. "I, uh, kind of want to go through [7], just because it's my number... But it doesn't really matter."

"That means I oughta go through [2], then, right?" Pear said.

Just like that, before any numbers could be crunched, people started to claim doors. Solo, Pear, Five, and Hex were interested in [2]. Zirconium, Lucky, and German were looking at [7]. Neither combination would actually work, even if Utami joined one of them.

"Well, Cera?" Hex had her arms crossed, a shift in her weight jutting one hip higher than the other. "Pick one, and we'll see how many wishes we can grant. Any leftovers will check out the stairwell."

"Ah, all right." Utami looked from door to door. Her brother was going through [7], but if she joined, Lucky or Pear would have to switch. More switching around would have to happen if she chose [2], but she had less of a chance of being alongside her brother. Still, this was about clearing the doors, not clinging to Zirconium. But he seemed so much worse for wear after what happened to Falcon...

Once again the scent of blood and burnt meat came to the front of her consciousness. Whatever choice she made would be fine. She just had to leave this room already.

Utami chose...


	4. Door 2

Author's Note: Thanks to nyarinpa for the review! It really made my day.

* * *

"I'll go with the [2] door," Utami said.

"All right, 2... And you're number [3]..." Five started counting on his fingers, although Utami wasn't sure how much that helped with finding digital roots. "How about this? Door [2] will be Pear, Cera, and Hex. [7] is Zirconium, me, and Lucky. And Solo and German get to check out the rest of the stairwell." He looked to the man with the [9] bracelet. "Or you could still try the door you wanted. Or the other one. It doesn't really matter."

German tapped his thighs with his hands. "Um... I guess I'll stick with door 7?" He shot Solo a look. "I-if that's okay with you."

Solo smiled, one arm akimbo. "That would just suit my name, wouldn't it? I don't mind." He tilted his chin towards the far wall with the pair of doors. "Enjoy your suspicious number games. Hopefully we'll run into each other again."

German swallowed, his brow furrowed. "We... We will, right? We can't all get through the [9] door if we don't add up to it. What if—"

"We'll be _fine_ ," Pear interrupted, a loud whine in her voice. "It's a single building, isn't it? I'm sure we'll all meet back up afterwards. Let's just start the game already. We don't have all day. Or night. Whatever it is."

Lucky squinted at her. "Why do you guys keep calling it a 'game'?"

"Because that's what it is." Utami's voice was quiet. "The [Nonary Game]."

Only a brief lapse of silence emphasized her words, but a shiver ran through her nonetheless. Could she really do this again? Would the math even work with Falcon dead? Would there still be an incinerator? How were they supposed to—

"Let's go." Zirconium took a few strides to [door 7] and put his palm to the affixed RED without pause. The panel gave a faint beep, an asterisk appearing on the screen above the circle that registered his hand. "Five?"

As the boy with the scar stepped up, German stood stock still. "H-hey, how come you know how to work that?"

Zirconium raised his eyebrows as Five verified. "It was obvious."

"Whatever, man, whatever." Lucky sauntered up with a sigh. "I'm just going to follow you guys. Hopefully there aren't any more puzzles in this one."

Utami accidentally burst out laughing. This earned her a bewildered look from Lucky before he shook his head and put his palm to the RED.

"German, you still coming?" Five called over his shoulder.

The big guy hesitated, performing some version of jogging in place, before finally surging to the door. After a moment of staring at the RED, he slammed his hand onto it. Unperturbed, the machine gave another little beep, four asterisks now displayed. Without comment, Zirconium reached for the lever on the side and thrust it down. The RED clicked, the apparatus on the side returning to its original position. Then the door began to creak open.

Anticipation buzzed through the room like invisible waves of energy as the eight peered inside. The floor continued on with speckled linoleum tiles that gave way to shadows. Beyond that, it was too dark to make out any details.

Five stepped through first, Lucky following him. Zirconium grabbed German by the back of his collar and dragged him with him—a feat that would have been impossible if German hadn't been too surprised to fight back.

As they crossed the threshold, a chorus of beeps began to chime in near-unison. The sound went on and off like a cold, metallic beating.

Zirconium was the first to grimace at his bracelet, but he began feeling around the walls for the DEAD without commenting on the reddish skull that had surely appeared on the display. The massive door creaked and slammed shut before anyone had said a word, but the beeping staved off silence.

"Is everyone okay in there?" Hex called, nearly pressing her mouth to the tarnished metal of the door.

"Yeah!" The yell was Lucky's. "We're trying to find the other one of those things!"

Pear cupped her hands over her mouth. "The little red light! Look for the blinking red light! It'll be the easiest to find in the darkness!"

"Got it!" Five shouted. "Guys, over here!"

Utami listened hard, but the others were far enough away the beeping was barely audible. She could, however, hear the gasps of relief a few moments later.

"Did you find it?" Solo asked from behind her.

"We're fine." The calm tone was Zirconium's. "Good luck."

German finally piped up, his voice a little strained from the panic. "And thanks... whoever that was, a minute ago."

"It was Pear!" the girl with the [2] bracelet chimed.

Solo ran a hand through his hair. "Let's the rest of us get going, too."

"Good idea." Hex crossed her legs past one another as she stepped sideways to [door 2]. "Pear? Cera?"

"Right." Utami trotted after her, coming up to the RED. She put her hand to the device first and watched the asterisk appear before stepping back. Hex went next, her fingers flat against the RED. Then Pear smacked her palm onto the scanner, her bracelets jangling. One last beep accompanied a third asterisk.

All three women reached for the lever on the side, but Pear was closest.

"I win!" She tugged the lever down with a racheting noise and pulled back from the opening door.

Another hallway crisscrossed with shadows appeared, and Utami felt her breath catch in her throat. This was it. The real beginning of the Nonary Game. Once she stepped inside, she had to find another way out.

"Cera, come on!" Pear, only two steps away but past the threshold, waved her arms.

"Coming!" Utami swallowed and darted in. After only a moment to confirm that Hex had entered as well, the door creaked shut. Immediately, she noticed the beeping of her bracelet. Her gaze flew to her wrist. Hovering above the digit 2, as if on a separate display, shone a bright pink light. It formed the image of a skull, as if the slow, steady beeping wasn't ominous enough. A look up at her companions showed that they, too, were transfixed by their bracelets.

"What on earth..." Hex muttered.

Utami turned to check the back side of the door, but no RED was in sight. Her pulse quickened as she spun on her foot, but the others had yet to mobilize.

"We only have 81 seconds to find the DEAD, you know!" With an unhappy growl, she charged between Pear and Hex, pushing them to either side.

Pear grumbled, but she followed along. "That's plenty of time, isn't it?"

"Given the consequences of not finding it?" Utami took in a sharp breath. "No! No, it's not!"

"Sheesh."

Hex suddenly burst past them. "There! On the left!"

Although the lighting was dim by that part of the hallway, Utami could still make out the pale edge of the DEAD and the red light emanating from it. Picking up the pace, she followed Hex there and put her hand to the scanner second. Pear was last again and pulled the lever more energetically than was probably necessary.

With a dying beep, the skull faded from Utami's bracelet. All three girls looked at their wrists before shaking it off, the relief bringing smiles to their faces.

Well, the faces that weren't Hex's. She frowned at Utami instead. "How did you know we had 81 seconds? I don't remember reading anything like that?"

Pear gave her a sidelong glance as well, and Utami suddenly felt like she couldn't tell the truth.

"Well, everything here is in nines, right? And nine seconds is too short, so nine times nine..." She finished with a tittery laugh and shrugged.

"But how did you know there was a time limit in the first place?"

Pear stepped in. "I mean, the bombs didn't go off immediately. Were they just going to blow up at some point at random or something?"

"Hmm." Hex looked down. "I guess you're right."

Pear gave Utami a wink before pivoting towards the rest of the hallway. "We're safe now, so let's get this girl time started!"

Hex raised an eyebrow but smiled. "Don't know if I would call it that, but yeah. Let's get started."

Utami managed to find a second light switch across the hall. She and the others proceeded to check all of the doors. The wall on the right was solid, a series of disconnected columns standing at regular intervals, but the left side held three wooden doors. Only the first would open.

"I take it that's our way out of here?" Pear gestured farther down. At the end of the hall was a large bulk of metal that looked more like fire doors than anything else. Where the two pale grey leaves overlapped was affixed something Utami took to be a lock.

"We can't go looking for the key without understanding the lock, right?" Hex started towards the fire doors at an uncomfortable pace that wasn't quite walking nor jogging. "Let's see what we have here." She hunched over a bit to investigate while Utami stepped up behind her.

The lock was a block of metal bolted to the frontmost door but overlapping to secure the other side. A single conspicuous keyhole was in the center, a symbol above it.

"Is that... Chinese?" Pear got on her tiptoes to see over the other two.

"Looks like it." Utami frowned, peering at the characters: [伏藏龍]. "I have no idea what it means, though."

Pear tapped her lower lip before offering, "Keyhole?"

Hex rolled her eyes, pulling back. "At any rate, we _are_ looking for a physical key. It would be too easy if it was here in this hall, right?"

"Of course," Utami replied. "Ready to check behind the first door?"

Pear grinned. "I have nothing better to do."

Smiling back, Utami led the way to the unlocked door. The round knob was cool in her hand as she twisted it and pulled the door open, stepping inside. The other two followed as she groped for a light switch.

 _Creeeak..._ WHAM.

Hex jumped, the ceiling lights shining off her blonde hair as it rippled from the motion. "What the—" She turned around for the now-shut door and pulled at its knob.

"Nnnngh!" As much as she strained, the door refused to give. She swooped to the other side to check the hinges, but they were hidden beneath a wedge of metal. With a grunt, she slammed her hand into the metal, making it ring.

"Shoot." She turned around to face the others. "We can't get back."

Pear watched the door before surveying the room. "Over there," she said, pointing. "That black door in the corner. It's probably our way out."

Utami had to agree. "Is that the only other door?" Even as she asked, she began to take a look around for herself.

It was clearly a classroom. The left wall was covered with a dark green chalkboard, its tray covered with chalk dust and a few writing accessories. Above it was a thin strip of cork board, pushpins of every color sticking out of it at random intervals. Straight ahead was a plain, white wall that reached halfway up, where it met with the steel glint of blocked-up windows. On the right was a smaller chalkboard and a television on a tall trolley, and two-person black desks were scattered in various locations at different orientations. The floor tiles were black and metallic, a little red LED in the center of each one; some were off and others on.

"Looks like it." Hex stared at the black door between the small chalkboard and the windows, leaning in its direction. "It... It doesn't even look locked to me. Let me check!"

The first step she took off the oddly-placed welcome mat sent an unwelcoming buzz through the ceiling speakers, and a loud, clattering, clicking sound came from the corner of the room. Hex stared at the door, her jaw dropped, and Utami followed her gaze.

Although the door had seemed perfectly normal a moment ago, a metal contraption now clearly barred off the handle.

Hex let out a cry of frustration. "What the heck did I do?!"

"I'm sure we can fix it," Utami responded, holding her arms out. "We just have to figure out how this room works."

The chalkboard—the far wall—the television—the desks and floor.

 **SEEK A WAY OUT!**

Utami's first move was to step towards the large chalkboard. Nothing happened with her first footfall, but the next sent the sound of the buzzer throughout the room.

"Ugh!" Pear's hands went to her ears. "That's getting annoying fast. What even _is_ it?"

Hex folded her arms. "Something automatic, I'm sure. It's a little too soon to say what's triggering it, but I'll figure it out soon enough."

"I'm sure there's a pattern..." Pear sighed. "I just don't know if I can stand the sound long enough to find it."

Utami returned to her search, stepping lightly, although it made no difference to the random outbursts of cacophony. The chalkboard was blank; not even smears remained, if it had ever been used. The full bottom tray certainly seemed to suggest that it had.

"I've never seen this much chalk dust in a single tray."

She frowned before running her fingers through the multicolored powder. It was cool to the touch and would certainly be hard to get off her hands, but—

"Huh? Something's in here."

She pulled it out and dusted it off as well as she could. A small, black something or other was in her hand. She tried to examine it a little closer.

"What's that?" Pear started, coming to lean over her shoulder.

"Don't ask me," Hex said from outside Utami's personal space. "It's part of a gadget of some sort, but I'm no techie."

Pear squinted at it before shaking her head and pulling back. "Yeah, I don't know what it's for, either."

Utami lowered the hand with the [gadget piece] and looked back at the chalkboard. Nothing else was hiding in the dust tray, and she still couldn't make out anything on the green surface. She turned her attention to the strip of cork board. None of the pushpins held notes, but they were arranged in a straight, if broken, line: yellow, green, red, red, red, yellow, red, purple, red, yellow, green, yellow, yellow, red.

"Maybe it's some sort of code?"

Not sure what to make of it, she moved to the last thing on the wall that drew attention. Its trigger tucked behind the back of the cork board, a spray bottle hung at the far end of the chalkboard.

"I can't quite reach it... Maybe I can push a desk over and climb on it."

She shuffled to the nearest desk and threw her weight against it.

"Rargh!" The wood creaked, but it wouldn't budge no matter how hard she pushed. "Well, there goes that idea..."

"Oh, here, I'll get it." Pear hurried up to the chalkboard, even though she wasn't much taller than Utami. She reached for the bottle, straining, but it was still beyond her fingertips. Letting out a flutter of a breath, she hunkered down and then leapt, smacking the bottle upward. Its hold on the cork board released, it fell to the floor with a clatter.

"Here you go!" She swooped it up and presented it to Utami with a grin.

"What the heck, Pear?" Hex frowned, teeth showing. "There could have been explosives in there or something! If you had given _me_ a chance to get it..."

Pear's head tilted to the side, her hands on her hips. "Why would somebody put explosives in a spray bottle?"

"Why would somebody do _any_ of this crazy stuff to us?" Hex shot back.

Pear paused before shrugging. "Good point."

Utami looked over the [spray bottle]. It didn't smell like blackboard cleaner, but it still had an ammonia tinge to it. What was it supposed to clean?

She kept it in hand as she checked the wall by the entry door. The paint had a lavender tinge, but there was no place to hide any clues. So she continued around, reaching the television after sidestepping a few desks. The lower two shelves were empty save for a remote that wouldn't change anything on the blank display.

"The television might be broken. That, and I don't think it's plugged in."

"Broken, huh?" Hex put a hand over her mouth and chin in thought. "Didn't you find something that might help?"

"Did I?" She looked down at the bottle of cleaner in her hand before blinking. She shuffled her loot around until the gadget piece was in her grip. "Let me see if this will fit somewhere..."

She felt along the back of the cheap, thick TV until a ridge felt out of place. "Maybe here?"

A little maneuvering, and the gadget piece fit in perfectly. Satisfied, Utami tried the remote again. The red light, which matched the remote casing, came on, but the television still didn't respond.

"I don't think this old thing is battery-powered," Hex offered. "But there's no power cord attached, either."

Utami tried pushing the TV buttons directly, but it didn't do any more good. She gave it up for the time being and looked over the blackboard between the TV and the black door. Its tray held a few pieces of chalk and an eraser, but there was nothing strange about them. The only other thing of note was the word "DUST" scrawled across the board in a pale yellow.

"Dust, huh?" She scanned the surfaces of the classroom, but none seemed particularly dusty. There was only the chalk dust on the other side of the room, but she had already checked that.

"Heh. Guess I didn't need a hint." Pleased with the fact that she, in some small way, had outsmarted the puzzle maker, she moved on to the next area. She'd searched everything but the desks and the floor itself, so she stepped out, another buzzer piercing her ears.

"Say, Cera?"

Utami turned to see Hex frowning at the floor in thought.

"I've been trying to keep an eye on the tiles while we've been searching," Hex said. "Those lights on the tiles keep shifting. I think it's every time we take a step. And whenever a foot falls on a tile with the light on..."

"The buzzer sounds?" Utami finished.

"Exactly. I can't imagine that buzzer signifies anything good, so we probably ought to avoid lit-up tiles."

Pear frowned, rubbing her cheek. "But how are we supposed to avoid them if they keep changing?"

Utami took a closer look at the tiles, but they all appeared the same. The only difference was the state of the lights, and that wasn't even constant. Maybe she would have a better chance of finding clues elsewhere. She turned her attention to the desks.

"I already checked the little book slots in all of them." Pear ran a finger across the surface of the one closest to her. "But there's nothing in there."

Hex scowled. "Well, there have to be clues somewhere. The Malefactor can't expect us to just jump around until the door opens."

"We can still try." Utami hopped in place a few times, smiling, but the others just stared at her. "Come on, it was worth a shot, right?"

"The lights didn't even change," Hex complained.

With a sigh, Utami turned back to one of the desks. Pear had checked the slots in the center of the desks, but she hadn't mentioned the top and bottom surfaces. Maybe something was hidden there. Utami ran her hands over and under each desk, finding nothing, until she reached one pushed up against the boarded-up windows.

"Eugh!" She snatched her hand back, but some of the grime had already gotten underneath her fingernails.

"What is it?" Pear hurried over.

"There's something gross on this desk." She squinted to find the surface a little bit lumpy. "It's all the same color of black, though."

Pear poked her cheek. "That's weird. Is it the only desk that's messed up like that?"

"I checked all of the others and didn't feel anything like this."

"Hmm." Hex stepped up, examining the desk without touching it. "It's got to mean something. Maybe we can clean it up?"

Utami stared at the surface for a while before remembering the spray bottle. Was it meant to be used here?

She shifted the container to her hand and sprayed the desk a few times. The solution bubbled a bit, but it wasn't making much of a difference.

"Here, I've got some tissues," Pear offered suddenly, holding out a wad of thin, white sheets. "You probably have to wipe it down for it to clean anything."

As Utami started wiping the desk, Hex snorted. "What are you doing carrying around facial tissue, you old lady?"

"Hey!" Pear's cheeks puffed out. "It's just because I had a cold last week. I forgot to clean out my pockets afterwards."

Utami risked a glance at Pear's rather skimpy outfit. "That has pockets somewhere?"

Pear pouted, putting her hands on the small of her back. "The shorts have back pockets."

"And you haven't washed your shorts in a week?" Hex commented.

"It's not like they actually got dirty the day I wore them. I'm a college student; I've got to conserve my laundry supplies."

"I guess that's one way to put it," Utami said as she wiped away the last of the grime. She eyeballed the desk again.

The surface was still black, if much shinier. But one chunk of the desk near the edge was missing. Even with the grime removed, the slot and contents were all black, but Utami could make out the figure-8 shape inside. Hoping she really had gotten all of the grime off, she picked it up and examined it.

"It's an extension cord," Hex said with a glance. She didn't add anything else.

Utami thought she knew just what to do with it. She hurried to the television and searched it for slots that one end of the wire would fit.

"Perfect!" She plugged it in and found an electrical socket for the other end.

Immediately, the television flickered to life. On the screen was a grid of large squares, 9 by 9. Some of the squares were covered by black rectangles. Others were red, and the rest white. A pale blue bar was at the bottom edge of the screen, surrounded by squares. At the top right corner was a deeper blue bar, but it only bordered a single square.

The three women watched the unchanging screen before Hex spoke up.

"It's this room, isn't it?"

Utami frowned in thought before look at the room, then the screen, then the room. "The black rectangles match up with the desks."

Hex nodded. "I think the white squares are the normal tiles, and the red ones the lit-up tiles."

Utami looked at the only other outstanding figures on the screen. The dark blue had to be the black door. The lighter blue, when cross-referenced, appeared to be the welcome mat.

"We've just got to get to the door without stepping on any red tiles, then, right?" Pear took a step back, onto a different tile.

The display shifted, pairs of red tiles moving one space like a bunch of short snakes. Utami checked the floor lights to find that they, too, had changed.

"So we have to keep track of the changes on here," Utami said, gesturing to the television, "and get through to the door without stepping on any red tiles. Does that sound right to you?"

Pear considered this before eyeing a safe tile a few feet away and springing to it. The television display didn't change, but a buzzer rang.

"Were you not listening?" Hex put her hands on her hips, leaning in towards her. "One step at a time, Pear."

"I was just checking," she grumbled.

Utami eyed the screen again. "I think we're supposed to start at the welcome mat."

"Roger!" Pear saluted and hurried over there. The red tiles continued to move, but Utami noticed a pattern. Each of them would go a certain number of tiles before going backwards, probably to repeat the process.

"You guys just tell me where to step." Pear eyed the black door. "I'm sure you can guide me now that we have that aerial view."

"All right." Hex looked back to her before locking her gaze on the screen. "I'll keep track of where Pear is. Cera, do you think you can guide her without screwing it up? If not, we can switch."

Utami sniffed. "I've totally got this." She looked over the screen and nodded at Pear. "Okay, start with a step forward."

Pear did as she was told, the red lights changing positions but no buzzer sounding.

"And then... left."

Pear took a step left and jumped as another blare of sound shot through the room. A look down at her feet showed a glowing red light between them.

"Ack, sorry!"

Hex gave Utami a look. "Are you sure you can do this?"

"I told you, I've got it. I just have to check the patterns more carefully. Um..." She looked at the screen. It was now obscured with some sort of error message in a painful shade of blue:

PLEASE STEP BACK

"Pear, can you take a step back?" she asked.

"Just one? Okay."

As Pear complied, the warning disappeared, and the red lights backtracked a space.

"So if she missteps, she can just sort of undo it," Hex commented.

"That's what it looks like. Okay! Let's crack this." Utami turned back to the screen and started giving more directions.

It took several tries, but eventually she found the path. A detour around the desk in the middle, then up, left, right, right, right, up, right, down, right, up, left, up, up, right.

As Pear took the last step in front of the door, the metal contraption across it swung up. With a holler, she seized the handle and swung the door open before the lock had a chance to reengage. Even though she crossed to another tile in doing so, no buzzer sounded. Instead, the red lights dimmed and the television screen went blank. Utami and Hex were able to walk whatever route they liked to the door.

 **YOU FOUND IT**


	5. Door 2 (2)

The instant Utami went through the door, she was almost face-to-face with another one. It had a handle similar to the door across from it, but the wood was covered in a layer of thick orange paint. The handle, of course, wouldn't turn. The key card reader on its left was probably responsible.

"It's colder in here," Hex commented, squeezing in between Pear and Utami. "I'm going to keep the black door propped open in case we need to go back for anything. Even just a warmup."

Utami watched her shove the red remote control between the door and its frame, although she doubted it would lock again. Better safe than sorry, though.

"Well, let's see if we can find a keycard in this mess." Pear shuffled past the other two farther into the narrow room. It would have been easier to negotiate if its long walls hadn't been covered with metal shelving. Art supplies, unfinished drawings, and random junk were piled in bins and scattered freely across the shelves. To the left was an empty wall that went straight from door to door, not contributing any more space to the room. On the opposite side, the short length of wall had forsaken shelving in favor of a narrow but tall plastic table.

"Two of us might have to go back just so we can fit in here better," Utami grumbled, taking a step in Pear's direction.

"Oh, we'll be fine!" the other girl chimed. Not entirely convinced, Utami took another sweeping look around the room. Orange door—shelves—table—shelves—black door.

 **SEEK A WAY OUT!**

It would have been easy to hide a keycard in the mess of the shelves, so Utami started the search there.

"There's so much junk in here… How are we even supposed to search it all?"

She would have to skim if she didn't want to get caught up in searching a completely pointless box of colored pencils. This wasn't quite the same game as the one seven years ago, but surely The Malefactor wanted similar results. He wouldn't make the keys so difficult to find that it would consume the whole nine hours. She was looking for things that stuck out.

"Okay. What have we got here?" She skimmed over a series of bins filled with coloring tools of various types until she reached the third shelf by the orange door. Drying on a paint-speckled metal tray was a watercolor painting she couldn't see at her present angle. Lifting the edges with her fingertips, she slid it halfway off the shelf.

"Some sort of… arctic landscape." The lines were a bit strange for an iceberg, but she couldn't imagine what else the picture was meant to be.

Pear seemed to be on the same page. "A painting of an icy wasteland, huh? This room's definitely a little cold, but not that much." She paused. "Although there's one kind of ice that could still be frozen solid in here."

"Huh?"

"[Ice-9]." Pear rested a hand on her hip. "You know about it, right?"

Ice-9... A form of ice that wouldn't even start melting at room temperature.

"I've heard of it," Utami answered slowly.

Pear looked back at the picture. "I thought so. A rare form of ice that scientists managed to create only recently. It doesn't exist in nature. Of course, if you added a seed crystal to anything containing water, it would spread pretty quickly. But there's a chance it was invented long before we figured it out."

"By the ancient Egyptians?" Utami murmured.

Pear grinned. "In order to freeze the priestess that made it onto the _Titanic_ , right? The real one, that was actually in the water."

Utami stared, not sure how to respond. Those conversations... [Ice-9]... [Alice]... She hadn't heard anything about them since the first Nonary Game. Did Pear just happen to know about them from somewhere else? It was probably easy enough information to find. But the mention of the real _Titanic_ being on the water, unlike...

Unlike Building Q.

Utami turned her head to take a better look at Pear's face. If she had more freckles, thicker eyebrows, a short bob of hair, and an ugly cast across her nose...

Utami gasped. "Momo!"

Pear scowled, her lower lip jutting out. "Way to blow the whole 'keeping our names secret' thing, _Utami_!"

"Sorry, sorry!" Utami clamped her hands over her mouth.

With an upset sputtering sound, Pear glanced across the room at Hex, who was searching farther down. She raised her eyebrows but didn't seem to have put together what was going on. She probably hadn't been listening until Utami shouted out Pear's real name.

"I'll still use your code names," Hex said slowly. "It's more useful to know each other's numbers than anything else..." She continued to stare at the other two girls before shaking her head and resuming her search.

Pear put her hands on her hips, leaning towards Utami. "You took long enough to recognize me, gosh."

"Well, your nose isn't broken anymore..."

Her mouth scrunched to one side. "Did you think I would have some sort of perpetually broken nose?"

"You never know," Utami replied with a grin.

Pear rolled her eyes instead of laughing. "I would ask you if you recognized anyone else from our game, but obviously you're not the best resource. I'll try your brother when we meet up later."

Utami thought hard, picturing the faces she had only seen clearly for a few unburdened moments. None of them but her brother's had seemed familiar. Falcon almost seemed similar to one of the boys, but he was too old to be Hayato.

"Yeah, you should probably ask Zirconium," she conceded.

Pear prodded her cheek in thought. "Even if it's just the three of us, it couldn't be a coincidence, right? We couldn't just happen to end up in a Nonary Game."

Utami nodded. "That would be kind of far-fetched, yeah... And... What about the code in the first room?"

"The dorm room?" Pear paused before her eyes widened. "You mean the 'ICHIROU YUUSUKE UTAMI' thing?"

"Huh?! Mine didn't have my name! It had..." She thought for a moment, voice quieting. "It had yours."

It was Pear's turn to let her jaw hang open. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. The code to unlock the briefcase—it used your old number, too."

"But mine used yours." Pear frowned, staring at the ceiling. "So you and I are here, and so is your brother."

Utami's gaze fell to her bracelet. "Then... Do you think..."

"Yuusuke could be here, too?" Pear finished. "It sure seems like it. I didn't notice anyone that particularly looked like him, though."

"Maybe The Malefactor messed up and took someone else by mistake?"

"I dunno." Pear went back to squishing her cheek. "Anything's possible, I guess."

Utami, Ichirou, Momo, and maybe Yuusuke... This Nonary Game had to be linked to the last one. Yet not everyone was in the last game. They couldn't have been. Solo, Hex, and Falcon were all too old. Five, Lucky, and German she didn't recognize. What exactly did The Malefactor want with them?

With a sigh of confused frustration, Utami took the watercolor painting and kept searching.

Although she was inclined to skip all of the clear bins with lids, one on the bottom shelf gave her pause. It was filled with multicolored buttons, but a single, black domino was pressed up against the side. She carefully removed it and held it in her hand.

"It's just a normal domino. There are three dots on one side and six on the other."

"That's called a 3-6 or 6-3," Hex said, right arm akimbo as she traced the symbols in the air with her left forefinger.

Utami frowned. "Why do you know something like that?"

"Why don't you? It's just common knowledge." Scowling, she crossed her arms. "Let me guess, you don't know what the dots are called, either."

"I mean, you just called them 'dots'."

Hex shook her head. "Pips! They're called pips. Geez. It's a good thing I'm here, or the rest of you know-nothings would never find a way out."

Utami didn't see how knowing the official names of domino dots would save them, but she let it go and resumed her search.

Past a vertical support were more shelves, and the one on eye level had another domino sitting out.

"This has four pips on one side and five on the other, so it must be a 4-5 or 5-4."

Keeping the cool, black bone in her hand, she moved on to a pile of mixed media supplies on the shelf below.

"Watches, chicken wire, rainbow sprinkles, striped shoelaces... Who even uses this stuff for art?"

Pear clapped her hands together. "You'd be surprised! The results can either be really good or a total piece of garbage, but it's a lot of fun to put together.

"If you say so."

The only thing that seemed to be useful was a bottle of superglue, so she went ahead and swiped it.

On the next shelf, in a pile of little jars of paint, lay another domino.

"There are two pips on one side and... eight on the other."

"Eight?" Pear frowned. "I didn't know dominoes went to eight."

Hex shook her head with a longsuffering sigh. "There are different kinds of dominoes. The most popular go up to six, while another common set goes up to nine. This is obviously the latter."

Utami squinted at her. "Why are you such an expert on dominoes?"

"I already said it's common knowledge!" She huffed, crossing her arms. "You kids really don't know anything."

"Ooookay." Utami blinked, eyebrows raised, before turning back to the shelf. Nothing else was of any interest.

The table by the short wall wasn't as simple as it first seemed. The black plastic was rough but shiny and had several thin, short projections forming a sinuous line. Most of the projections were accompanied by dominoes of all different numbers. She tried to discern a pattern, but they seemed randomly put in. A total of five blank slots were present, as was a steel grey button. What seemed to be the last domino—or the space where the last domino would go—was next to some sort of horizontal, glass panel. Utami couldn't make out anything beneath it.

"The Malefactor must want us to complete the domino trail," Hex said. "Then we probably push that button."

"Or we could just push it now." Pear strained to reach past Utami, the both of them unable to fit in the space next to the table.

"Aha!" she cried in success as the button depressed beneath her fingers.

But nothing happened.

" _Told_ you." Hex shook her head and turned back to the shelf.

Pear tried removing one of the dominoes and slamming it on the glass panel, with similar results.

"Oh, well," she sighed with a lopsided frown. "We'll keep looking. There's no point playing with it until we have all five dominoes."

The women shuffled around until Utami was able to investigate the shelves on the other side of the room. Inside an otherwise empty paint can was a [2 domino fragment].

"It's one half of a domino, with two dots on it. It's split cleanly across the center line I can see in the whole dominoes."

Frowning, she continued to shuffle around, finding a [blank domino fragment] in a stack of cheap, plastic cups. Did it go with the 2 fragment? They fit together, but she still wasn't sure.

A whole [8-1 domino] set on a piece of paper covered with little shreds of construction paper that combined to build an autumn forest. It still looked immature, but Utami wasn't here to comment on The Malefactor's art skills.

"A piece of construction paper is stuck to the back of this one," she muttered to herself. "I don't see any sort of code it could be, but I'll leave it on."

She turned to the next set of shelves, but Hex stopped her.

"Since you're holding onto everything, you can take this. It was on the top shelf." She handed over a [9 domino fragment].

Utami examined it. It was cut just as smoothly as the other two and would fit perfectly with either of them. She would have to find another way to figure out which one went where. And there had to be at least one more piece if she was supposed to put together whole dominoes for the plastic table.

She found it in a tray of pipe cleaners and paper clips. The [7 domino fragment] was no different than the others.

"At least one pair of these must go together."

Pear smiled. "Well, put them together, then!"

After a moment of inventory, Utami held the 9 fragment in one hand and the superglue in the other. Combining them, she ended up with a [sticky 9 fragment]. Before the glue could dry, she dropped the bottle and took out the blank fragment. In one motion, she matched it up against the 9's sticky end to make a [9-1 domino]. Using the same process, she put together a [7-2 domino]. Hopefully she had done that correctly.

"That makes five!" Pear waved an arm. "Let's try the table puzzle again."

Utami squeezed past her to the far end of the room and examined the tabletop. Bits of her reflection in the five blank spaces stared back at her.

"We have all five," Pear said. "Let's put 'em in. Cera?"

"Yeah, but..." Utami looked at the first domino in her hand, the 7-2. "What order do they go in?"

Pear shrugged emphatically. "Who cares? We can just try them all."

"That's a lot more combinations than you think," Hex said, frowning. "For time's sake, we should probably look for another clue."

"Another one?" Pear gaped. "We've already searched the entire room!"

Hex sighed. "I'll check the classroom. Anyone coming with me?"

"I really don't think you'll find anything about this room in there," Utami said. Pear nodded in agreement.

"Fine, have it your way. I'll be back."

Hex walked out, her shoes faintly squeaking as she entered the classroom. Pear and Utami watched her in silence until she was out of view.

"So..." Frowning, Pear twirled a few fingers in her ponytail. "Where do you think the clue could be?"

"We've already searched everything feasible." Utami heaved a sigh before eyeing Pear sideways. "Maybe we just have to wait for The Malefactor to show up and pull it out of his—"

"Hold that thought," Pear interrupted, looking startled. "Wasn't there one other thing you found that was strange?"

Brow furrowed, Utami navigated her possessions until she found the mostly dry watercolor of the icy wasteland. "You mean this?"

Pear nodded enthusiastically. "The lines are kind of weird, right? Something's gotta be going on with it. It's probably the clue we need."

Utami had to agree, but no matter how she looked at it—sideways, upside down, slanted, flipped over—she couldn't make out anything that would tell her the order of the dominoes. She tried blowing on the wettish parts, but that did no good. She couldn't make out a pattern to the undried paint, either, even if she shined light on it. It almost seemed to form letters, but it was too broken-up and seemed foreign, anyway.

"Am I looking at this wrong?" she demanded, waving the painting at Pear, who took it. "I'm not finding anything. Is it even a clue?"

"Huhmmm..." She turned the painting in her hands, squinting as she moved it closer to, then farther away from her nose. "Maybe we should light it on fire?"

"What?! How are we even supposed to do that? We didn't get a box of matches or anything."

Pear puffed out her cheeks. "Hey, I'm trying!"

Utami sighed, letting it go. There had to be some way to figure out the painting. What did they have to do to it? How did they have to look at it?

Just as the thought crossed Utami's mind, Pear tugged on the chain of the single fluorescent light and plunged the room into darkness. A faint light seeped in from the wedge of the open black door, but that was all.

"What the heck, Pear? How are we supposed to see it at all now—" Utami's mouth fell shut as she looked down at the painting. Pear let out a high-pitched cry of victory and steadied it in her hands.

Only visible in the lack of light, a greenish glow formed the word "MINUS."

"That's got to be the clue." Utami looked over the rest of the painting, but nothing else was visible.

Pear clicked the light back on. "Want me to go get Hex?"

Utami paused. "Aw, leave her in there. Let's show her a couple of dumb kids can figure it out without her."

Pear grinned but flipped her hair in contempt. "I'm an adult, thank you very much."

"We're college students. We're really not adults."

Pear laughed and followed Utami to the domino table. Cracking her knuckles, Utami stared the empty spaces down. Five dominoes, five gaps. It couldn't be that hard.

So… "MINUS." That had to do with numbers. Different combinations of people could get into the room, so it probably wasn't about the bracelets. The only other numbers were on the dominoes. And each one had a pair, so one could be subtracted from the other.

She quickly did the math in her head. The [5-4] domino would be [1]. [6-3], [3], [7-2], [5], [8-1], [7], and [9-0], [9]. So she had one for every odd digit.

She started at the obvious beginning of the line of dominoes. Five in a row before the gap, and the larger numbers were all on top. She carefully slid the [7-2] into the gap, 2 side down. Then there were three, then seven, then one, then nine dominoes. [6-3], [8-1], [5-4], [9-0].

"Ready?" Utami said, looking over her shoulder.

Pear nodded. "I got this." Squeezing her arm past Utami's, she slammed her palm down on the silver button.

The little strips of upright plastic holding the dominoes in place retracted with an echoed click, and the first began to fall. An almost musical clattering filled the room, each domino knocking into the next, until the 9-0 domino clacked onto the glass area, skidding until it bumped the edge of the glass. Something like gears whirring sounded from the interior of the table, then a tiny _ping_. Little cracks shot across the glass, the sound obscured by the domino scraping against the shifting surface. The motion stopped, chipped white fragments highlighting the broken edges of the glass.

"So, who's reaching in there?"

Hex's voice made Utami jump. "How long have you been there?"

Hex's eyebrows rose, a smirk on her face. "Long enough to hear your 'we're real adults' spat. I thought I'd humor you." She reached a hand towards the glass plate, her palm up. "We only have so much time, so… Who's reaching in there?"

"I got it." Pear gathered up the longer part of her skirt in one hand, coating her fingers. "If I die here, remember we as I was. Wild, and free."

Hex snorted, and Utami covered her laugh with her hand. "Understood. Get in there, soldier."

The pieces of glass clanked against each other as Pear poked them around and dug deeper into the table.

"Ah!" She went a little faster, flicking smaller pieces out of the way, and wrapped her fingers around something before yanking it out. "Ta-da!"

In her hand, partially obscured by the folds of her skirt, was an orange keycard.

"Great job!" Hex smiled, her chin on her hand. "Here, I'll swipe it so you can get your skirt back in order."

Utami didn't take the keycard herself, mainly because she would have to worm her way past both of her companions to get to the door. Pear nodded, nearly dropping the keycard before Hex could get it. Turning on her heel, the oldest of them trotted to the orange door, held her breath, and swiped the card. With a low, double beep, a green light came on. Hex seized the handle and yanked it, the door creaking open.

 **YOU FOUND IT**

Laughing, Utami hurried to the open door, Pear in her wake. Hex barely made it through before the other two came careening after her, more than ready to be freed from the cramped supply room. Only the light from that room, however, allowed them to see anything in the next room. It appeared to be another classroom like the first, although its tiles were normal and its desks were arranged in a more standard three-by-three grid.

On the center table, something small gleamed.

"Is that hallway key?!" Utami started towards it, but Pear bounded past her, leaping over the corner of one of the tables to collide with the center desk. The key started to skid off, but she snatched it as she doubled over, her torso stretching across the desk. Panting, she pushed herself back to her feet.

"...Did you think it was going to vanish?" Hex asked with a look of contemptuous amusement.

"Not taking chances!" Pear blurted as she turned to the hallway door. She took enough time fussing with the knob to make Utami fear it was locked, but it gave after a few moments of aggressive turning. She and Hex hurried after Pear before the door could close.

The girl with the [2] bracelet was running to the far door of the hallway with enough carelessness she stumbled, dropping the key. She managed to right herself before she could hit the ground face-first, but she couldn't beat Utami to the key.

"Okay, okay. You got it." Utami held her hands up, the key warm from Pear's tight grip. "Just calm down, and I'll open the door."

Pear swallowed and gasped, "Right."

Utami took the last few steps to the door and looked over the head of the key. The symbols matched: [伏藏龍]. Hands still shaking from adrenaline, she put the key in its slot and turned. The door gave a satisfying click, and she stepped back, Hex coming up to swing the door open.

One door down, two if Zirconium's group had already made it out. There were still several more to go, of course, but cold waves of relief still rolled down Utami's back as she, Pear, and Hex stepped beyond the hallway.


	6. From One to Another

Author's Note: Thanks to nyarinpa and ndrwhptn for the story faves/follows! I'm glad to know someone else is enjoying this.

If you are, too, let me know! All reviews are appreciated.

* * *

Utami and the others found themselves in a room swathed in blinding light. Compared to the hallway's meager fluorescent bulbs, it was blinding.

When she managed to blink the burn from her eyes, Utami tried to take in the details of the room. Along one wall were the remainders of six large windows split by small frames of abstract art. Behind her were two matching doors, likely the ends of the [7] and [2] doors both, as well as a blank whiteboard that spanned most of the wall. Smaller, wooden desks were arranged in a spacious grid, and study carrels in units of four lined the back wall. On the far right were a few more desks with blank computers. A partial divider came towards her from the back wall, stopping just beyond the computer area to leave an empty double doorway between them.

Empty as far as any actual doors. A tall figure still reclined against the side.

"Solo!" Utami hurried towards him without thinking.

Perhaps she'd been worried after all that they wouldn't all be able to meet up again. It wouldn't have made any sense otherwise, the way the game was played—but Solo in particular may not have made it without passing through a door. If only Falcon was still with them. The numbers would have worked out then, right?

Falcon...

She'd almost failed to realize how wonderful it had been to move on to rooms untainted by the reek of blood and organs. Away from the vulgar sight of the gory mess that could have come from any of them. The horror of it still left a bitter taste in her mouth worse than that of ash and smoke.

Utami shook her head, as if it would fling the memory of blood scent away from her.

There had been nothing wrong with Solo going elsewhere. They had needed to search out all of the building they could. In the end, no time was wasted, and she and her companions had cleared a numbered room.

Solo's easy smile didn't fade. "Cera. How was your little excursion?"

"We made it through. How about you? What did you find?"

Solo nodded to the hallway behind him. "The other stairwell is right over there. We've got four floors. There's no way to get into the second floor, where the dorm rooms were. We probably don't want in there, anyway. The building's gotta be pretty darn airtight if that Malefactor's going to smoke us out in a couple of hours."

He tilted his head in acknowledgement as the other door opened, more people spilling into the room and blinking the light out of their eyes. Utami counted all four of them, breathed a sigh of relief, and returned her attention to Solo. He raised his voice so everyone could hear.

"Those were the only numbered doors on this floor. We can go up the stairs two stories to a room with three more. There's an elevator, but it's not functioning. Besides that, on both floors, there are several locked doors. Some have keyholes and some have card scanners. They're all marked with Chinese symbols."

Zirconium, who had snuck up right behind Utami, nodded, his sudden voice making her jump. "What do they mean?"

"They're the names of the nine types of Chinese dragons." Solo forced a loose hair back with the rest. "I didn't see all nine of them, and I couldn't give you translations, but I'm pretty sure I'm right."

"We found one of those keys behind door 2." Pear hurried up to him to present said key. "Was this on one of them?"

Solo squinted at the key before shaking his head. "I only saw some with two symbols, nothing with three. That's worth hanging on to, though."

"Of course." She tucked the key in the back pocket of her short shorts.

"You didn't find a way out, I take it?" Lucky didn't even look hopeful.

Solo shook his head. " 'Fraid not. We're gonna have to open a couple more doors before that's possible."

"There weren't any other keys behind Door 7," Five said, scratching the scar under his eye. "So I guess there's no choice but the numbered doors."

Hex nodded. "Let's at least see firsthand what we've got to work with."

With a tip of the head, Solo gave her a smile and turned to the doorway. In a focused but tense jumble far from single-file, Utami and the others followed.

The hallway continued straight for a few paces of the same, dark blue carpet before crooking to the right. A few feet later, the area opened up into a wide atrium. A series of large, metal desks and filing cabinets lined one side whose wall must have been entirely composed of windows. On the right were several wooden doors that didn't quite line up with the desks. Most bore the scars of removed plaques, but only one had a special lock with a [應龍] symbol.

"Winged Dragon," Solo informed her.

"Why do you know what these mean, anyway?" German strode through the cloud of people to Solo's side, frowning at him as close to eye-to-eye as any of them would get. "You didn't make these locks, did you? P-put them in here?!"

The accusation didn't seem to shake Solo. "I'm sure not The Malefactor if that's what you're trying to say. As to why I know..." He tilted his chin up, grinning at Pear, Utami, and Hex. "What do the ladies think? What would impress you most?"

"I'd say Chinese literary scholar," Pear said, thumping a first onto her open palm. She didn't seem to be aware of the implications of Solo's wording.

The man with the [1] bracelet turned with a shrug. "Then I'm a Chinese literary scholar," he said, facing ahead and continuing the walk.

German frowned at Pear, although he didn't seem capable of looking anything more than grumpy. Pear just watched him innocently before examining the area around her.

Utami looked upwards, railings far above her head making it clear this was an atrium of sorts. The second floor seemed to be included, although she saw and smelled no smoke.

At her side, Zirconium peered in the same direction. "Must be blocked off."

"From the dorms?" Utami watched the vertical lines of the railing shift orientation as she walked past. "I guess so. It's too high to get up there if we don't have a ladder or anything, though."

"There's probably no point."

"I guess not." She resolved to keep an eye out for a large ladder nonetheless. It did seem like The Malefactor didn't want them to bother with the second floor, but it could be another puzzle. It wasn't the next step, though.

She focused ahead as they approached the casing of a glass elevator. It was oval-shaped, the longer axis in their direction, and a large amount of whitish sand filled in the area behind it. The giant sandbox was fenced-off, but anyone could maneuver over the short, white, discontinuous rails. To the left, the desks gave way to an incomplete wall and a short hallway that ended abruptly. Utami could make out a door on the side of the room, but she couldn't see the details over the lock. It looked like two more Chinese symbols, though, which meant they weren't anywhere close to opening it.

"Is there anything written in there?" Pear leaned over the rail to the point she almost fell in.

"I didn't see anything," Solo answered.

Pear nodded, pulling off her sandals and hopping inside. Scrunching her toes in the sand, she examined the surface before getting on her hands and knees.

Hex pulled back. "What on earth do you think you're going to find in there?"

"I don't know! A key, a clue, a hidden door..." She shuffled around, pushing the sand every which way with her palms.

Five adjusted his glasses. "But we're not even behind a numbered door. Would The Malefactor leave us anything out in the open?"

"Don't know until we check."

The group milled about by the elevator until Pear hauled herself back to her feet. "Nothing. Maybe something'll drop out of the sky later. I'll come back and check."

"You do that," Utami said.

The group went around the elevator—this being the first floor, it only had an up button, which, as promised, didn't respond to Utami's touch—and found themselves right in front of the stairwell door.

"Up we go." Solo pushed the bar across the door and swung it open, holding it until Pear, Utami, and Hex were all through. The door nearly smacked Lucky in the head before he realized it was closing.

"Sorry," Solo called, halfway up the first flight. Lucky just blinked and pushed the door open for Five behind him.

The group climbed up the stairs, their footfalls low and clanging but as random as popcorn popping. German stopped to try the handle on the second floor, but it did no good.

"Why would you even try that?" Hex had her arms crossed as she looked him up and down. "Do you want to start choking in smoke again?"

"I-it could have been let out of the building," he objected. "Come on."

Hex shrugged, clearly unconvinced, and returned to the stairs.

Utami was slightly winded by the third floor, but not enough to swallow her pride and breathe through her mouth. In the lead, Pear charged for the door and flung it open. The hallway outside wasn't well-lit, but it was enough for her to walk into without hesitation. Knowing Pear, that wasn't saying much, but Utami stepped through behind her brother.

The hallway appeared identical to the one below, although shifted to the side. A row of locked doors was on the same side, one of them with a Chinese symbol over its knob. At the end, right on top of the study room, the carpet gave way to whitish linoleum tiles. The far end of the room had a soft leather couch, and other furniture was enough to seat ten students. A flat-screen television was in the middle of the room, facing the chairs. Past it were tables for foosball, air hockey, ping-pong, and shuffleboard. None of the accessories were in sight. Tall, black bookshelves were against either wall, well-worn popular books inside them.

On the last short wall were two doors of an ugly metal that didn't match the rest of the recreation room.

"[4] and [6], huh?" Lucky muttered, his sneakers squeaking as he stepped towards them.

"And one more on this side." Solo tilted his head towards the one stretch of wall Utami hadn't yet looked over. About a third of the space was taken by a metal door the size of the wooden ones they had passed on the way. It was marked with a deep red [1].

"Three this time, huh?" Five rubbed his forearm like it itched. "Are we going to be able to go through all of them at once?"

"There's no way." Utami met his gaze with a frown. "Three people minimum go through a door, and there aren't nine of us."

A humid wave of unease seemed to go through the room when the topic of their fallen comrade was breached.

"So, two doors." Lucky glanced at each of them in turn. "I guess we can start making claims again and see what we can work out."

"Actually—" Hex pulled her red file from the sleeve of her shirt—"I had a little time to myself in the last door, and I've calculated all of the valid combinations and their digital roots."

"Just in your free time, huh?" Solo whistled.

Hex smirked and flipped the top of the file open. "For 1..."

She continued to rattle out a list of numbers so long and continuous Utami couldn't keep track of which number went with which others.

"How about we just lay claims again," Five said, looking done with Hex's plan and ready to shoot down any objections. "Cera can go first since she went last last time. Sound good?" He didn't pause. "Good. Cera, what'll it be?"

"Right, um..." With the others' eyes trained on her, Utami didn't have enough time to figure out whom she would go in with. She just had to pick a door. Arbitrary decision.

Utami went with...


	7. Door 6

Author's Note: This isn't quite as long as the word count implies. You'll see what it is when you get there.

As always, I love reviews!

* * *

"I'll take door [6], I guess," Utami said.

Hex nodded, scanning her paper before anyone else could make a claim. "[3] included in a digital root of [6]. She can go with [2] and [1]; [4], [1], and [7]; [5], [1], and [6]; [5], [7], and [9], or [4], [2], and [6]. And [9] can take it or leave it in most of those."

Five shuffled a hand through his hair, the ringlets quivering. "I'll go."

Hex nodded. "So that leaves me and Solo or Lucky and German. Guys?"

"I'll help with this one," Solo said, stepping sideways towards Utami. "Might as well start my numbered door exploration alongside two members of the finer sex."

Hex stared back at him, eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Am I being hit on by a married man?"

"Who on earth said I was married?"

"The tan line on your left ring finger is really obvious." She sighed, rolling and unrolling the corner of her paper on digital roots. "You take the ring off so you can pretend you're not married, and... Ugh. Poser."

Solo shrugged. "If it works, it works. But for the record, I've never confirmed that I'm married to anybody."

Hex shook her head before turning back to her paper. "Back to the _important_ part, if [1], [3], [5], and [6] are going through door [6], then we're left with..."

"[2], [4], [7], and [9]," German said. He paused. "That... makes [4], right?"

"So we can all go through." Lucky seemed to relax, a certain stiffness fading from his shoulders.

"That's what it looks like." Hex tucked her notes away. "Everyone ready?"

"Already?" German looked over his shoulder at the rest of the room.

Utami frowned at him, but he quickly moved his gaze to a different area. "What else did you want to do?"

He fidgeted. "I don't know..."

As he looked from one door to the next, gaze lingering on [1]...

 _Ding dong ding dong..._ _Ding dong ding dong..._ _Ding dong ding dong..._ _Ding dong ding dong..._

 _Dong. Dong._

The second toll of the bell faded into a hum that made Utami's ears buzz. The room was struck silent by the sound, a sudden heaviness in the air pressing down on them.

Zirconium was staring at his bracelet, as if it would corroborate the time.

"Two o' clock..." Utami felt the sudden urge to sit down. They had been going for two hours, and only seven remained. She couldn't figure out if that called her to immediate action or rest. There was no time to rest, but a thin layer of fog from the anaesthetic that brought her here still clung to her mind. How long had it even been since she had properly slept?

A voice rudely snapped her out of her reverie.

"Time's a-wastin'!" Pear hollered, slamming her palm on the RED for door 4.

"That girl needs medication," Hex muttered, heading to her own designated door.

Although the blonde may have had a point, Utami was grateful for the impetus. Adjusting her arm warmer over her palm, she stepped up to door 6's RED and verified. A second asterisk appeared. Solo followed her, then German. Five came up last, his hand tense as he pressed it to the screen. With a beep, the upper display confirmed his input.

Utami cast a glance to the other door. Pear, Zir, and Lucky had all verified as well. Zir gave her a sloppy salute and pulled the RED's lever. Utami smiled and did the same.

In near unison, the metal doors creaked open, the [4] and [6] thinning and vanishing from sight. German still seemed nervous, especially when he glanced at those going in with him, but the four of them walked through the door nonetheless. The metal didn't even have the chance to creak again before Utami found the DEAD. Taking a step to the side of the doorway, she put her hand on the input screen, and it responded with a beep.

She didn't have to call to the others for them to follow. Hex, then German, then Solo, and finally Five all scanned their palms. Being the closest, Five pulled the lever with a "Here goes."

Once the clunk of the lever faded from the air, so did the high-pitched warning sounds of their bracelets. German took in the most audible gasp of relief.

"Here we are." Five fiddled with the low blue collar of his shirt. " 'Here' being, uh..."

Utami backed away from the DEAD to take a look around. There was no hallway to pass through this time. Ahead of them was a wide expanse of room lit by many large, hanging brass lights. Bluish, fake granite tabletops and the thinly cushioned chairs surrounding them dotted the room in an imperfect grid that stretched across the whole room in both directions. The bottom half of the walls were wooden planks, while a white wallpaper with either dots or flowers covered the top half. A few posters cut from colorful paper hung on the walls, but she couldn't make out the contents from here. The ceiling was high—two floors high—and small sets of stairs that matched the walls led up behind and across from Utami. A cutout area was at the top of the stairs, containing several blocked-out windows and stacks of extra chairs. At the right, the top three angles of a typical trapezoid bulged into the room. A dark, wood door was on each of the short sides, and the longer, parallel wall held double doors of the same shade. The handles were covered by a metal apparatus that even German couldn't break or pull off the door. Some sort of keypad was embedded in the metal.

Utami glanced around again for any other doors, but that was it. Undoubtedly the smaller doors were impassable, but she would still check.

"I'd have to say it's a cafeteria." Solo rubbed the triangle of hair on his chin.

Five folded his harms loosely, hunching his shoulders. "No food in it, unfortunately."

"Uh, The Malefactor already said he's going to poison us," German said. "I'm not eating anything in here."

Five nodded with an embarrassed frown. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Hex took a step forward. "Let's see what we can do."

The posters on the walls—the three doors—the chairs and tables—the stairs to the next-floor lofts.

 **SEEK A WAY OUT!**

Utami started with the doors. The handle on the nearest one wouldn't budge, and straining against it just made her hands hurt.

"I already checked the other side," Five said, all fingers but his thumbs in his jean pockets. "It's no good. The double doors have to be our way outta here."

"I figured. I had to make sure, though..."

"Of course." Five smiled, showing straight but dull teeth.

Utami stepped past him to investigate the door lock. Everything was bolted down, as usual. No way around solving the puzzle.

The puzzle itself seemed to be some sort of text. The device on the lock contained a full keypad, minus numbers and symbols. She prodded the buttons just to see how many letters would fit on the display: [9].

"Of _course_ it's nine."

So she was looking for a nine-letter word. Or a random jumble consisting of nine letters. It was a start, at least.

As she backed away, the corner of a table rammed into the small of her back.

"G'owww!" She leapt forward, rubbing the affected area as she turned around. "Why are these things so pointed? Somebody could get hurt."

Sitting on the edge of another table, Hex failed to hide her amusement as she eyed Utami and the offending table's corner. "Doesn't The Malefactor _want_ us hurt?"

Utami pouted. "Not if we can get out in time. ...Probably."

Waiting for the embarrassed blush to fade, she stared down at the table. Nothing was strange about its surface. There was a bit of dust, but it didn't form any sort of pattern. Just a record of disuse. The chairs were the same.

"There are a lot of desks, so we should split up the investigation," Hex suggested. "Someone count them."

"How about you count them yourself, Miss Know-It-All?" Five drawled.

"Aw, hush." Solo backed onto the nearest set of stairs and started pointing at tables in sequence. "And don't call a lady 'miss' if you aren't sure?"

Five huffed, folding his arms in the limp way he did so. "Well, I don't see a wedding ring."

"You don't see a wedding ring on me, and she thinks I'm hitched."

"Just leave it and let's call me Hex like I said in the beginning, huh?" She sighed, tapping at her high bun to make sure it was still in order.

"Twenty-one tables," Solo announced, putting his hand down.

Hex only paused for a moment. "Cera covered this one, so that's four each. Let's go."

The five of them dispersed, Utami taking the four tables just past the one that had so savagely attacked her. With a reasonable large surface and six to eight chairs in each unit, it took more time than she would have liked, but the third table finally turned up with something.

Scrawled across the surface in a rude, jagged etching was a collection of grouped letters:

W KLPWLYL IZJI AL JOL AZR AL DZRRML IR KL

XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR DRVL JXF MJYL CRN

"It's a bunch of gibberish. It's word-length gibberish, though. Maybe it has to do with the lock's code?"

Before she could call out to the others to share her discovery, the silence of the room was broken.

"I found something on this desk!" - "Some sort of clue's over here!" - "Come and look at this, will you?"

She looked around, three of the others bent over a table like she was, both palms planted. Solo, meanwhile, was glancing from one person to another with surprise written on his features.

"Am I the only one that didn't find anything?" He returned to his usual smile. "Sorry about that."

"Yeah, yeah, quit being useless and check this out," Hex responded, running a hand over her table.

Utami walked over there as well. "There was something on mine, too."

Hex waved a hand. "We'll look at it later."

Utami nodded and found a spot at Hex's table, leaning over one of the pushed-in chairs. Silver marker went across the surface in thin, curving strokes:

CRN'YL HRI IR MJYL CRNOMLPB

XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR HWYL CRN JXCIZWXH

"Mine was the same thing." German shouldered his way back from the table.

"Mine, too." Utami paused. "Well, not exactly the same thing. The same type of thing, though."

"It's got to be a message." Solo glanced at the table that Five was still hovering over. "A four-part message, I reckon."

Hex tapped her index fingers together a few times. "Let's look at the other parts, then."

Utami led the small group to her table, then went across to German's.

CRN'YL HRI IR HR RNI JXF BWHZI BRO WI

XRKRFC UXRAM AZJI CRN AJXI LSDLQI BRO CRN

"At least it has one real word on it," German said with a shrug.

Hex frowned. "What are you talking about?"

" 'BRO,' duh." Utami shook her head. "Come on, Hex, get in the game."

She sighed, shaking her head. "It's probably just a coincidence."

"You want to assume there are coincidences in a place like this?" Solo let out a whistle. "You're gonna be missing a good handful of clues thinking that way."

Hex ignored him, instead leading the way to the table where Five still stood hunched over the contents. They were inscribed in much the same way Utami's had been.

JXF XRKRFC AWPP KL JM MROOC JM CRN WB CRN FRX'I HLI WI

MR FRX'I HWYL NQ RX CRNO FOLJVM

Utami only had to watch Five's tight face for a moment. "What is it? Do you know what it means?"

"Not yet." A line of light passed back and forth across his glasses as he glanced at her. "It has to be a cryptoquote, though. I used to solve these all the time in middle school."

"Cryptoquote?" German frowned at the clumps of letters.

Five nodded, his gaze fixed on the desk once again. "It's a kind of word puzzle. You're given a quote, but every letter has been replaced with another letter. Like, all of the Rs are now Xs. That kind of thing."

"I take it you've got this one under control, then?" Solo said, hands in his pockets.

"Definitely." Five nodded emphatically, making eye contact for a brief moment before grinning at the three other parts Hex had written down for him. "The first thing you look for is 'people.' Pretty, common, very distinctive pattern: a-b-c-a-d-b."

He pored over the documents excitedly before slowing down. "But, uh, not all quotes have the word 'people'..."

Hex gave him an expressionless look. "Are you sure you can handle this?"

Five swatted the air, like the comment was an annoying insect and nothing more. "Next strategy: the most common letter is E. So the letter with the highest frequency in a cryptoquote is probably an E. So here we've got... Rs, looks like." Borrowing Hex's pen, he scribbled an e above every r in the puzzle.

"Then, um..." Brow furrowed, he looked over his own section. "This doesn't seem right..."

Utami watched him with an exaggerated grimace. "Want me to try?"

"No, no! There are still other ways to approach this. There's a single letter there—" he pointed at the W from her own section of test—"so that has to be either A or I. There aren't that many common two-letter words, either, and then the apostrophes are going to be followed by Ss or Ts or VE/REs—"

"Well, you have fun with that." Solo backed up, gaze going up and down one of the staircases. "There's still some uncharted territory in here, so I'm going to check that out in the meantime."

"Good idea." German looked back towards the numbered door and its staircase. "I'll check out that side."

"I won't stop you," Solo said, sauntering towards his own staircase.

Utami looked between Five, Solo, and German. She wasn't about to stand there doing nothing.

"Hey, Solo!" She broke into a jog to catch up as the tall man paused and looked over his shoulder. "I'll tag along with you, make sure you don't miss any of the lower shelves."

He smiled. "I always have trouble with that. C'mon."

Utami felt a sudden jolt of apprehension about being alone with Solo, but she shook her head. He seemed more like a harmless, if irksome, flirter than anything else. And there were still other people in the vicinity.

The wooden stairs creaked like the floorboards of a haunted house as they went up. Utami found herself gripping the meager handrail in case the floor fell out from under her feet. The steps held, though, and she found herself on the balcony-like area next to a poorly placed stack of chairs. She had to squeeze past Solo to get more room.

"So, what have we got here?" Solo strolled to the far wall to begin his search, so Utami started right where she was. The stack of chairs was inconveniently placed, but nothing else seemed to be amiss with them. They were the same kind of chairs as those downstairs. She checked the shadows underneath the pile, but nothing was suspicious there, either.

The hardwood floor was a little rough, but the cracks weren't big enough to hide anything. The bolted-up windows were as empty as anything else. She moved on to the next pile of chairs, just a pair of them, but nothing was on or in them. Finally...

"Something's up with this pile." Utami bobbed up and down to check the sides, but not all of them were torn. "Solo, can you help me unstack these?"

She turned to Solo, who was staring at the back side of his [bracelet].

"Solo?"

He finally looked up, a startled expression crossing his face before he eased back into a smile. "Sure thing. That pile, right?"

Between the two of them, the chairs were laid out in an order-preserved line in no time. Each had a single letter torn into its seat.

"MIRGTUN," Solo said out loud, reading them. "Doesn't sound familiar."

"Do you think it's part of the same code?" Utami checked under the seat for any more clues but came up empty-handed.

"We've got plenty of that code, and none of those are single words. Well, word-ish things." He scratched his jaw just under the farthest reach of his sideburns. "This feels like something different to me."

Utami nodded. "We'd better keep looking, then."

A pencil and blank piece of paper were sitting on the last, blank chair, so she made a [note] of the chair letters.

Solo returned to where he had last been standing with the bracelet in his sights.

"Solo... Is there something bothering you about your bracelet? Too tight or something?"

He glanced at the bracelet in question. "No. It can't be too tight."

Utami frowned. "Can't?"

"Not if it's the technology I think it is." He slipped a single finger under the bracelet—all that would fit. "It automatically adjusts to wrist size. Pushing in a finger or two won't fool it into loosening, though. Once it's initially set, it's set."

Utami nodded slowly, pulling at one of the steel bands.

"What makes this technology truly impressive is that it can still unlock under specific conditions. The exact conditions are specified by whoever's actually using them. Usually it regards information stored in a separate place that's transmitted wirelessly." He squinted at the face with the [1] but couldn't seem to figure it out. "It was designed for medical patients, especially disoriented ones. That's why it has a tracking device and EKG reader."

EKG—electrocardiogram. A measure of the heart's electrical activity to detect abnormalities as well as basic heart rate.

"Is it always on the wrist, though?" She frowned, looking down at her own bracelet. "That wouldn't work very well for the EKG."

Solo raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

"Well, the heart uses the same electricity as the rest of the body." She flexed her fingers. "Muscle impulses in particular. The patient would have to be completely still and relaxed, and probably need to hold the bracelet over their heart. It still wouldn't come out very well."

"Huh." Solo looked at the bracelet before his expression darkened. "I guess it still wouldn't have any trouble distinguishing a dead body from a live one, though."

Utami shook her head. "Solo..." She turned her head, looking up at him. "Did you... design these?"

He laughed. "Oh, no. I'm just a simple cellist." A pause. "A simple Chinese literary scholar, I mean."

Utami didn't break her gaze. "Are you saying you just made all of that up, then?"

"No. I said _I_ didn't design these, not that I didn't know who did."

Solo knew the designer of the bracelets? Then maybe...

"Who was it, then?" Utami fisted her hands, face tight in concentration. "The Malefactor is the one who put these on us. He must have contacted that person. Or... Maybe he is that person."

Solo watched her before shaking his head and staring down at the seat cushions. "I can guarantee that that person isn't involved in this."

Curiosity still burned through Utami's veins, but she couldn't bring herself to ask any more. Solo didn't seem quite himself at that moment. Had the inventor of these bracelets... died?

Or was he lying? Could he be The Malefactor?

"..."

Utami pushed the thought aside, trying to focus on the search. Before she could check out the next, innocuous-looking stack of chairs, a voice called from across the room.

"Guys! I think I've found another clue!" It was German, leaning over the railing of his loft area.

Hex, down at the cryptoquote table, snapped her head up to see him. "Well, what is it?"

He turned back to a few chairs he had unstacked and pivoted towards them again. "1 3 4 7."

"Well, Zir and Lucky aren't in the room." Leaning against the wall, Solo crossed his ankles. "It must mean something else."

"Is that all that's there?" Hex called.

German shook his head, fidgeting before training his gaze on Five rather than Hex. "There's pencil and paper here, too, but it's just normal stuff."

Utami waved to get his attention. "Write the numbers down and let me see it, okay?"

He blinked at her. "S-sure." Seeming nervous, he quickly turned around to jot down the numbers and hurried down the stairs and across to them. Wadding up the note, he tossed it to Solo rather than running up the stairs. Solo swatted it rather than catching it, but the paper still fell to the second floor where Utami could pick it up.

"1, 3, 4, 7. It doesn't correspond to our bracelet numbers..." She put it away for a moment and brought up her other note in her hand. "MIRGTUN."

"...Maybe these go together?" She held one over the other. The letters couldn't describe the numbers unless the code was a lot more complicated. But the numbers could refer to the letters.

"And the one I wrote down first was the top of the stack, so I'm sure it's number [1]. 1, 3, 4, 7 would be... MRGN. Morgan?"

She folded her own [note] to exclude the other letters.

Solo stepped to her side, his boots making the floorboards squeak. "I'm not seeing anything else up here."

"You don't think so?" Utami peered past him, but the only other things of interest were two more stacks of chairs, both of which Solo had already investigated. "But what else is there?"

"Hm." He leaned on the railing, looking out over the cafeteria.

Utami did the same. From her vantage point, she could just see the colorful posters on the wall below.

"Here, I haven't checked these yet!" She hurried for the stairs and came down, passing Five on the way. He was still frozen in front of the cryptoquote. A few more steps, and three posters were in front of her: blue, yellow, and pink.

The blue she checked first.

"It's a portrait of some emo-looking kid with his eyes closed. Well, the eye I can see is closed. I assume the other one is closed. It might not be, but with that hairstyle, that wouldn't be a very good way to wink.

"...I don't recognize him. There aren't any letters or numbers, either. I don't know what to make of this."

She moved on to the yellow poster. It had a marker drawing of ears of corn—many, many of them, on their stalks. Still no letters or numbers.

The pink poster had two circular cut-outs: a red one with a [+] and a blue one with a [-]. On the main piece of paper, many curving arrows were drawn, forming a starburst around each of them, most of which connected across the middle.

By that point, Solo and German had both come to examine the posters. Utami sidestepped out of the way and scanned them. "Any ideas?"

"Umm..." German squinted at the pink poster. "Well, that one's an [electric field]. You know, arrows start on the positive charge and end on the negative one... It's a textbook-looking picture, honestly." He nodded at Solo.

"I can't make heads or tails of the fella." Solo finally shifted his gaze away from the blue poster. "And then... Corn is corn."

German leaned in close to the electric field poster. "Nothing looks funny about it... Is there no code here? It seems so out of place."

"Maybe it's just not that complicated," Solo offered. "We've got three different pictures, all in the same place, right? Maybe there's just something they have in common."

Utami looked from one to the next. Something in common...? She didn't know anything about the face, so maybe just the yellow and the pink. The corn stalks and the electric field. They both...

"They're both [fields], right? The electric field, and the cornfield. And... I don't know about the blue guy. I guess people could be named Field. Probably a last name. I wouldn't name my kid Field unless it somehow went really, really well with the surname."

Solo's mouth hung open for a moment before he actually spoke. "Gotta admit you lost me for a minute, but yeah. Those two would both be fields."

"So the key word is [field]?" German cocked his head to the side. "Will that affect the cryptoquote, or..."

"Either that or what we found on the chairs. No other words around," Solo replied.

"The chairs, huh?" Utami took out her [folded note]. MRGN and field... Well, they made a total of nine letters.

"The keypad!" Before she'd worked out her reasoning, if she indeed had any, she pelted across the room to the locked double door. She just had to combine the two words. But which went first?

"M, R, G, N... MRGN... Mrr-gin..."

As she prepared to pronounce the four letters some other way, she stopped, breath hitching.

"Morphogenetic. The passcode is [morphogenetic field]."

She lifted her hand to the keypad, her fingers quivering. It was just a term. Two words. Nothing more than she wanted to let them mean. And she wasn't even typing in all of it. Just MRGNFIELD. Simple.

"Come on, do it..." She depressed the M with some difficulty, but each letter came easier after that.

The D was in before the letter display changed:

-ERROR-

The word remained for a few moments before the screen went blank. Utami tried FIELDMRGN, but it didn't do any better.

"We probably have to translate it through the cryptoquote." Hex had taken a few steps towards her, although she still had to raise her voice for it to carry.

Utami nodded, jogging over to Five's table. "How's that going?"

Five looked up at her almost immediately this time. He was grinning, his small eyes scrunched even smaller. "I got one."

"One of the couplets?" She leaned over his shoulder at the paper and found no voice for a moment. "...One of the letters."

An N was written boldly over each X.

"That's... all you got?" German asked slowly, clearly unsure if this was a joke or not.

Five giggled. "But it wasn't an obvious one—at all. Not to start with."

Utami stared. "Uh, that's great."

"He's been like this ever since he wrote the Ns down," Hex sighed, leaning on the table. "Maybe you ought to actually solve it while he's busy celebrating."

Five was too busy grinning to object. With a sigh, Utami positioned herself over Hex's notes.

W KLPWLYL IZJI AL JOL AZR AL DZRRML IR KL

N - - - - - - - - -N - - - - - - - N  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR DRVL JXF MJYL CRN

CRN'YL HRI IR MJYL CRNOMLPB

N - - - - - - - - -N - - - - - - - - - - -N - - -N  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR HWYL CRN JXCIZWXH

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - N  
CRN'YL HRI IR HR RNI JXF BWHZI BRO WI

N - - - - - N - - - - - - - - - - -N  
XRKRFC UXRAM AZJI CRN AJXI LSDLQI BRO CRN

-N - N - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -N  
JXF XRKRFC AWPP KL JM MROOC JM CRN WB CRN FRX'I HLI WI

\- - - - N - - - - - - - - N  
MR FRX'I HWYL NQ RX CRNO FOLJVM

"Well, the apostrophes after the Ns have to separate them from Ts, right? So that makes I, T."

\- - - - - - - -T - T - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T  
W KLPWLYL IZJI AL JOL AZR AL DZRRML IR KL

N - - - - - - - - -N - T - - - - - N  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR DRVL JXF MJYL CRN

\- - - - - - -T T  
CRN'YL HRI IR MJYL CRNOMLPB

N - - - - - - - - -N -T- - - - - - - - - N-T - -N  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR HWYL CRN JXCIZWXH

\- - - - - - -T T- - - - - T -N - - - - T - - - - -T  
CRN'YL HRI IR HR RNI JXF BWHZI BRO WI

N - - - - - N - - - - - T - - - - -NT - - - -T  
XRKRFC UXRAM AZJI CRN AJXI LSDLQI BRO CRN

-N - N - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - N'T - -T -T  
JXF XRKRFC AWPP KL JM MROOC JM CRN WB CRN FRX'I HLI WI

\- - - - N'T- - - - - - - -N  
MR FRX'I HWYL NQ RX CRNO FOLJVM

"T, blank, blank, T... Maybe it's 'that'?"

\- - - - - - - -THAT - -A- - - H - - - -H - - - -T  
W KLPWLYL IZJI AL JOL AZR AL DZRRML IR KL

N - - - - - - - - -N - T - - - - AN - -A  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR DRVL JXF MJYL CRN

\- - - - - - -T T - -A  
CRN'YL HRI IR MJYL CRNOMLPB

N - - - - - - - - -N -T- - - - - - - - -AN-TH N  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR HWYL CRN JXCIZWXH

\- - - - - - -T T- - - - - T AN - - - HT - - - - T  
CRN'YL HRI IR HR RNI JXF BWHZI BRO WI

N - - - - - N - - - -HAT - - - ANT - - - -T  
XRKRFC UXRAM AZJI CRN AJXI LSDLQI BRO CRN

AN - N - - - - - - - - - -A- - - - - - A- - - - - - - - - - - - N'T - T - T  
JXF XRKRFC AWPP KL JM MROOC JM CRN WB CRN FRX'I HLI WI

\- - - - N'T- - - - - - - -N - - - - - - A  
MR FRX'I HWYL NQ RX CRNO FOLJVM

"That one there sure looks like 'anything.' "

I - - - I - - -THAT - -A- - -H - - - -H - - - -T  
W KLPWLYL IZJI AL JOL AZR AL DZRRML IR KL

N - - - Y - -G- ING-T - - - - -AN - -A - Y  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR DRVL JXF MJYL CRN

Y - - - -G -T T - -A - Y  
CRN'YL HRI IR MJYL CRNOMLPB

N - - - Y - -G - ING-T- GI- - - Y - -ANYTHING  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR HWYL CRN JXCIZWXH

Y - - - -G -T T-G - - - T AN - I - HT - - - IT  
CRN'YL HRI IR HR RNI JXF BWHZI BRO WI

N - - - - - N - - - -HAT Y - - ANT - - - -T - - - Y  
XRKRFC UXRAM AZJI CRN AJXI LSDLQI BRO CRN

AN - N - - -Y- -I- - - - A- - - - - Y A- Y - - -I - -Y- - - N'T G-T IT  
JXF XRKRFC AWPP KL JM MROOC JM CRN WB CRN FRX'I HLI WI

\- - - -N'T-G- I- - - - - -N Y - - - - - A  
MR FRX'I HWYL NQ RX CRNO FOLJVM

"That g-blank has to be 'go.' And if R is O, then N has to be U, so we can get a bunch of 'you's."

I - - - I - - -THAT - -A- - -HO- - - -HOO- -TO  
W KLPWLYL IZJI AL JOL AZR AL DZRRML IR KL

NO- O-Y- - GOING TO- O - - AN - -A- YOU  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR DRVL JXF MJYL CRN

YOU - - GOT TO -A - YOU  
CRN'YL HRI IR MJYL CRNOMLPB

NO- O -Y - GOING TO GI- - -YOU ANYTHING  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR HWYL CRN JXCIZWXH

YOU - GOT TO GO OUT AN -I HT - - O - IT  
CRN'YL HRI IR HR RNI JXF BWHZI BRO WI

NO-O - - -NO- - -HAT YOU -ANT - - - -T -O- -YOU  
XRKRFC UXRAM AZJI CRN AJXI LSDLQI BRO CRN

AN- NO-O-Y- -I- - - - A- - -O- - Y A- YOU- I - YOU- ON'T G-T IT  
JXF XRKRFC AWPP KL JM MROOC JM CRN WB CRN FRX'I HLI WI

\- O -ON'T G- I- U- -ON YOU - - - - A  
MR FRX'I HWYL NQ RX CRNO FOLJVM

"Well, that's 'nobody'—'nobody's'—and that's got to be 'your' at the end. And there's 'what you want,' right?"

I - B - I - - -THAT - -A- - -HO- - - -HOO- TO B  
W KLPWLYL IZJI AL JOL AZR AL DZRRML IR KL

NOBODY'S GOING TO -O - -AND SA- - YOU  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR DRVL JXF MJYL CRN

YOU - -GOT TO SA - YOU -S  
CRN'YL HRI IR MJYL CRNOMLPB

NOBODY'S GOING TO GI - - YOU ANYTHING  
XRKRFC'M HRWXH IR HWYL CRN JXCIZWXH

YOU - GOT TO GO OUT AND I HT - - O - IT  
CRN'YL HRI IR HR RNI JXF BWHZI BRO WI

NOBODY -NO-S -HAT YOU -ANT - - - -T -O- -YOU  
XRKRFC UXRAM AZJI CRN AJXI LSDLQI BRO CRN

AND NOBODY- I- - -B A- -S-O- -Y AS YOU I- YOU DON'T G-T IT  
JXF XRKRFC AWPP KL JM MROOC JM CRN WB CRN FRX'I HLI WI

SO DON'T G- I- U- -ON YOU -D - A-S  
MR FRX'I HWYL NQ RX CRNO FOLJVM

"I've almost got it! Just a few more letters, and..."

Finally, the quote made sense.

I BELIEVE THAT WE ARE WHO WE CHOOSE TO BE

NOBODY'S GOING TO COME AND SAVE YOU

YOU'VE GOT TO SAVE YOURSELF

NOBODY'S GOING TO GIVE YOU ANYTHING

YOU'VE GOT TO GO OUT AND FIGHT FOR IT

NOBODY KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT EXCEPT FOR YOU

AND NOBODY WILL BE AS SORRY AS YOU IF YOU DON'T GET IT

SO DON'T GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAMS

"I cracked it!" Utami slammed the pen down on the table, startling Five into holding up his arms for protection.

"Good job, Cera." Hex scanned over the words and couldn't seem to find anything wrong with it. "We need to encode something for the lock, right?"

She nodded. "MRGNFIELD."

Hex scanned the finished cryptoquote line by line. "M is coded by V. R: O..."

A few more strokes of the pen, and VOHXBWLPF appeared.

"Well, you solved it." Solo smiled at Cera as he ran a hand through his hair. "How about you do the honors?"

"Yes, sir!" She saluted, snatched Hex's paper, and hurried to the double doors. "Here goes nothing..."

A faint beep accompanied each button pressed, and Utami found herself holding her breath as she pushed the F.

The screen showed VOHXBWLPF for a moment before flashing "DOOR OPEN" three times. As the screen went blank, a large clanking came from the lock. Utami stepped back, the members of the room watching in anticipation as the bars of metal folded and unwound. The lock remained on one handle but had pulled away from the other by the time it stopped moving.

Utami looked over her shoulder to see Five still lingering by the last carved-up table.

"Are you ready to move on or what?"

He turned to her, still grinning. "Let's friggin' go."

Grinning back, Utami spun to face the door and turned the handle, swinging it open.

 **YOU FOUND IT**


	8. Door 6 (2)

Hex was through the door before Utami could shift her grip on the handle, so she just held the door open and stepped through last.

The lighting inside was a harsher yellow that cast faint, multidirectional shadows around anything and everything. The light glared off two lines of sneeze guards and the metal compartments beneath them. The narrow gap separating them was closed off by a half-height swinging door, and a darker area spread out behind it. The small doors at either side of the room were locked, but they only led back to the cafeteria. Between those and the double doors were small stretches of speckled, brown countertop with cabinets. Ice cream syrups and other toppings were set out with cones and a single-lever dispenser.

"I guess I wouldn't have expected to end up anywhere else," German said, a hand on the back of his head.

Hex shrugged, eyes shut. "It doesn't matter as long as there's a door on the other side."

Utami nodded before turning her attention to the investigation. The lunch lines—the back area—the cabinets.

 **SEEK A WAY OUT!**

Since she was right next to the ice cream cabinets, she started there first. The one on the right was locked. She rattled the little double doors, but it did no good.

"Maybe there are some clues on the top?"

She doubted the key would be so close, but it was worth a check. Although many bottles of potentially messy foodstuffs were present, no sprinkles or chocolate sauces dirtied the wax paper. Nothing was hidden in the stacks of light cones, so Utami's gaze rested on the ice cream dispenser.

"Well, I've got to check it." She took a cone, just in case, and pulled down on the lever. Even though the light was on, nothing came out. "Aw, man."

Hex had her hands on her hips. "Were you going to sit down and take a break in the middle of the investigation, Cera?"

"Maybe I was."

"Ugh. You're such a child."

Utami thought about her response for a moment before sticking out her tongue and blowing a raspberry. Hex scoffed and turned away.

"Nothing over here right now, until I find that key. Let's try the other side."

Stepping past the door she'd unlocked, she stopped at the other set of low cabinets. These opened with a short squeal.

"I can just make out something on the bottom shelf..."

Squatting, she reached her hand in until she was able to pull something out.

"It's a bunch of [grapes]. I think it's plastic, though. It's not very heavy."

Five eyed the fake fruit. "What the heck are we supposed to do with that? Eat it?"

"Don't know. Wanna try it?"

He flinched back. "Are you serious?!"

"Are _you_?"

Apparently not, since he backed away. Utami shook her head and checked the top of the ice cream station.

"It's hard to look at everything so tightly organized like this. Especially for ice cream toppings. It all seems so lonely and unloved."

She picked up the container of chocolate syrup but paused. Its weight seemed strange in her hand.

"Better check this out..." Unscrewing the lid, she pulled it off. "Huh?! It's... a pretty weird handle for a screwdriver, but I guess it will do. At least it's not covered in syrup."

She moved on to the nearest lunch line. She couldn't see anything that could lead to a secret compartment. The slots that would have normally held metal tubs of food were empty. Not even water sat in them.

The sneeze guards were clear but a bit scratched-up.

"This one's a little crooked-looking... I don't know if it has to do with anything, though."

She checked the other side, but it all looked the same. As she was leaning in to double-check the food slots, Solo waved to get her attention.

"Found this in there. Want to take a look?"

He offered her a [roll of bread].

"Maybe _this_ we're supposed to eat. It's not plastic."

Five stepped sideways towards her. "Are you serious this time?"

"...Under what circumstances do you think we'd legitimately have to eat something to unlock a door?"

"I don't know!" Face red, he crossed his arms and looked away. "Quit leading me on!"

"Five, you're just hungry, aren't you?"

He let out a growling sigh, scowling at the lunch line. "A little."

Snorting, Utami kept the roll in hand as she kicked the swinging door open. It clashed against the counter, swinging back before she could get out of the way.

"Ow!"

Hex, already on the other side, raised her eyebrows. "A little enthusiastic, are we?"

Utami wrinkled her nose. "Being more enthusiastic than you is easier than you seem to think."

She grinned. "It's just because we haven't run into anything that excites me."

Solo leaned an elbow on the counter. "Not even me?"

"Not in your dreams."

Utami went through the swinging door a bit slower this time, successfully coming out on the other side. Lengths of wall with low counters were in front of her, but they allowed a hallway-sized gap in the middle. She checked the counter to her left. Empty cabinets and a hot water dispenser. It was high enough you could probably put a large pitcher beneath it.

Utami pressed the red button, but nothing happened.

German flinched back regardless. "Are you trying to spray scalding water on everybody?"

"Yeah, but I'm not succeeding."

He shook his head, taking a step back into the darker area.

"What's so scary about a little spray of water, anyway?" she called after him. "You're a big guy. You can take it."

Even in the shadows she could see his eyebrows rise as his gaze settled on Solo. "Just because I _can_ take it doesn't mean I _want_ to. It's not like burning myself a little is going to help my game."

Utami shrugged. "You could take up hot coal walking."

"No, thanks. My toes are sensitive enough."

Hex snorted, and German suddenly spun on his foot, retreating further into the back area.

The corners of Five's mouth were twitching. "We may want to give him a minute before we try to include him again."

Utami went to the other counter. The surface was clean and empty, and so were the shelves.

"Whoa! This one just jumped out at me." Scooting back, she kept the [loose shelf] in her lap and shut the doors again. She stood to put it in better light. In dark lines that seemed burned into the wood were a few symbols:

Δ=FRENULUM

Five drew back. "What in the heck does that mean?"

Solo prodded at the top bump of his chin. "Frenulum's what keeps your gums and lips attached to each other, right? Or is it your tongue and the stuff underneath?"

"Either way, it sounds like it has something to do with the mouth," Hex concluded. "I'm sure we'll find another clue to figure out why that's important, and why there's a triangle on it."

Utami nodded, lowering the semi-heavy shelf and shuffling toward the darkness.

"You really can't see much in here," German called. "There's one light on this counter, though."

It was easy enough to detect the light he meant, and Utami gravitated towards it. A single lightbulb sat on the table, or, rather, a block of wood. A few wires and switches seemed to be attached, although she couldn't trace the current without any better light.

"Well, here goes." She flicked the nearest one, and the bulb went out.

"Gah!" A voice that seemed to be Five's accompanied the sound of someone jumping. Utami quickly flicked the switch back. Five still looked a bit startled, but not enough for her to assume a fear of the dark.

She went to the next switch—the bulb went out again, but one further down came on. She hopped sideways to get to it and found another pair of switches. Some more toggling made it clear that there were at least four bulbs on the counter, none of them strong enough to light the room without each other's help. One switch was next to the third and fourth bulbs, and two by either of the first.

"I bet if I just flip these switches in the right order, I can get all of the lights on."

After much circling, bumping into Solo—enough that it didn't seem to be an accident on his part—plunging the room into darkness and different varieties of semidarkness, and flicking switches with audible clicks, Utami finally turned on the last bulb, keeping the other three lit. Immediately, the buzzing of something like a fan sounded, and overhead fluorescent lights came on, further illuminating the room.

"Good." German's gaze was on the ceiling. "I bump into people enough in plain daylight."

"Must be hard, being able to lift a reasonable amount of weight," Hex said, falling silent as she looked at the island's countertop. Utami looked as well.

On one side was a normal sink with a high, arching faucet, a clear plastic pitcher beside it. But the rest of the counter space was taken up by something like a cross between a giant Operation game and an educational mannequin with its—well, her—front side sliced off.

"Th-that's not a body, is it?" German was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, apparently after having averted his gaze from the counter.

Utami shook her head. "Real pancreases aren't bright yellow."

"It certainly doesn't reek like a dead body," Hex said.

Five blinked, frowning at the blonde. "Have you... run into a lot of dead bodies?"

"Oh, not personally." She twirled one of her shorter strands of hair. "Well... Depends on what you mean by 'a lot.' " She shrugged. "Anyway, we need to find the way out, right?"

"Of course..." Five still didn't take his bemused gaze off Hex.

Utami, meanwhile, took a better look around the kitchen area. It appeared to be mostly cleaned out, but a bakery cart or something like that almost blocked off the route to the food line. She stepped over to it, dwarfed by the vertical supports that held shelf after shelf of thin, metal plates. The bottom plate was tilted downward like a ramp, but she wasn't sure how to fix it.

"Huh? It's missing one. Maybe I'm supposed to put something in there?"

She paused before gripping the Δ=FRENULUM shelf and hauling it up to shoulder level. "It's too small. I can only get it onto one support or the other, not both. There's got to be something else..."

"There was something in the food line about that size," Five offered.

"Was there?" Utami hurried back over before fixing her gaze on the crooked length of the sneeze guard. "It won't just come off, though."

After a moment's pause, she put the [odd screwdriver] in her hand and targeted the screws keeping the clear plastic rooted. A few rather difficult turns later, she had it.

"Now to see if it works." Trotting back to the bakery cart, she lifted the sneeze guard and started to slide it onto the empty shelf. "Looks like a pretty good fit. Nothing's happening, but if I push it in all the way..."

Five's sniggering behind her almost covered up the sound of something falling and rolling.

"Oh, shut it, you ten-year-old." She looked down to find something thin and shiny at her feet, past the end of the tilted bottom shelf. It was a [plain key].

She took it and immediately returned to the lunch line area, kneeling by the locked cupboard. The key slid in and turned with a little click. Letting out a breath, she swung the doors open. They held a single container that she pulled out onto the floor.

"It's a thick glass cylinder topped with a red, plastic lid. Through the glass... I can see a bunch of suckers. Must be squid. Good thing I can't smell it, since I have no idea how long it's been in there. The lid has something carved into it... 'RUGAE.' I guess the squid wants to listen to Bob Marley."

Hex watched with a blank look. "I don't think that's quite right."

Utami dragged the squid-in-a-cylinder back to the main kitchen to take another look around. She went to a large ice machine situated in the far corner. Flipping the lid up just showed her a bunch of ice cubes and a large blue scoop.

"Well, if we need ice, there it is."

She shut the lid and turned her attention to the side.

"What the heck? That can't belong there." A strong magnet was attached to the side, and to that magnet, a large cleaver she couldn't move. "Well, all the better to hack you open with."

After a bit of skimming, the pitcher by the sink drew her attention, so she picked it up.

"It's clear-ish plastic, but there are words written in black marker on the side. 'KILL HER.' Sounds positive."

"Well, there's a cleaver right there," Five said with a smirk. "Only two 'her's in here, so who's it going to be? You or Hex?"

Utami paused. "I'm gonna have to vote Hex."

"Excuse you!" Hex's arms were akimbo. "How about we look for more clues before jumping to voting on who we eat first?"

Five backed up. "Who said we were going to eat you? Gross!"

Hex just sighed. "Let's keep investigating."

Utami moved on to the nearest point of interest: the sink. She turned the faucet with a squeal, and water began to flow.

"Hey, it actually works." Germany watched the thin stream of water flicker in the light.

Solo nodded. "Seems like there oughta be a reason for that."

Utami looked at the water for a moment more before holding out the pitcher. The water pattered against the bottom before beginning to fill up. Once the water reached the top, she turned off the faucet and pulled the pitcher to the counter.

"It's heavier now. Still just as ominous."

Sliding past the last two lightbulbs, Utami looked over the person—body—thing on the counter.

"I'm just going to call her Science Girl."

Five looked down at it. "It's a girl?"

Utami shrugged. "Yeah. Look how small the stomach is." She gestured to the appropriate organ.

"I... don't think that's how you determine sex," he replied slowly.

"All I have to work with here is a digestive tract and respiratory tract, okay? It's the best I've got."

She paused, her hand still by the stomach. For the first time she noticed an abnormal dip in the organ. It was already a hollow organ cut across the middle, but an additional pit sank like a golf hole in the middle of it. Another scan of Science Girl showed three similar pits: one in the oral cavity, one in the small intestine, and one in the large.

"It looks like we're supposed to put something in them."

German looked over the plastic model. "I would guess food." He looked up. "Don't you think, Five?"

Utami glanced at German sideways. "I thought you were talking to me."

He shrugged, pulling the bottom edge of his jacket down.

"Do you have a problem with me?" She huffed, flicking her head to the side. "It's the hair, isn't it? What's so bad about sky blue?"

"What?" German's brow furrowed. "No, I..." He sighed, starting to walk away. "I'm just bad at talking to girls, okay? I always end up saying dumb stuff."

Utami shrugged. "Then just talk to me like I'm a guy."

"Believe me, that doesn't work."

Solo chuckled. "Ain't it the truth."

Hex raised an eyebrow at that. "Are we done now?"

"What do you mean, 'we'?" Utami responded as she shuffled off the long sleeves of her shirt. "You were never even a part of the conversation."

Holding her breath, she wrapped her sleeves around her chest as tightly as she could and crossed her arms over them. "Okay, German, I'm officially a dude. Hit me."

German scratched his head. "Like, literally hit you, or talk to you?"

"Both!" she roared, thumping her fists against her chest.

"Want to go back to the investigation?" Hex asked Five.

"Sure."

"Oh, we're just having fun." Utami paused before repeating herself in a lower register.

"Making it more likely that I die from poison gas isn't my idea of fun," Hex retorted.

"Killjoy." Utami put her sleeves back on and readjusted her short-sleeved hoodie.

With a sigh, she returned to her scrutiny of Science Girl.

"We already thought something was referring to the mouth, right?" Solo followed her gaze. "It must be what goes there."

Utami watched the unmoving plastic a while longer. Δ=FRENULUM. Even though the pit was circular, she needed a triangle. And it was probably food, right? Maybe she had something that would work...

She shuffled through her inventory until the bunch of fake grapes was in her hand. They didn't look very angular, but they were still a lot thicker on top than on the bottom. And any little kid drawing a bunch of grapes would do a pyramid of purple circles, right?

Gently, she dangled the grapes over Science Girls' mouth and lowered them in, releasing her grip on the stalk. Nothing seemed to change, but no buzzers sounded, either.

Five squinted at the pile of plastic grapes. "I think I get it..." He looked up at Utami. "What are the other three things, though?"

"I only have two that might work. I'd better find the other one."

He nodded. "I'll keep an eye out."

Utami scanned the rest of the kitchen wall, but it was empty. A thick bundle of multicolored wires ran from the door lock to the bottom of the island, but she wasn't sure what to do about them other than trying not to trip. The island itself had its own sets of drawers, though.

"I checked all of the bottom cabinets," Hex said, stepping out of her way. "Still working through the drawers, though."

Utami nodded and started with the first drawer in sight. Empty. She took a handle in each hand and pulled out the next pair in sight. Empty, and not so empty.

"Are those... pats of butter?" German peered over from beside the ice machine.

Utami reached into the drawer to scrape all the cold squares of foil towards her. "If it's not, I can't believe it." She counted them out. "...Was I really expecting a number other than nine?"

"It's a square number, too." German shrugged, still not quite looking her in the eye. "Double the pun."

"Double the fun." Utami clicked her tongue at him before moving on to the next side of the island. Smooth wood. Any other drawers would be one more corner over. Before she could grasp the next three handles, Five's voice cut through the near-silence in the room.

"Hey, over here!" He was back by the hot water heater, holding up something that rattled. "Does this count as food?"

Utami swooped over and checked out the bottle.

"Vitamins," Five said before dropping it to her. She just managed to catch it before she turned it over in her hands.

"It's an opaque bottle labeled 'vitamins.' It rattles, so it's probably not lying. There's also something scratched onto the bottom: HAUSTRA."

"Haustra..." Five scratched his stubbly chin. "That's part of the colon, right?"

Utami glanced over the water heater to see how Five had gotten the vitamin bottle, but she soon realized it wasn't worth the effort. She had to go back to Science Girl. She knew just what to do now... probably.

Arms full, she hurried back to the kitchen island and looked over the three empty pits in Science Girl.

"Time to fill you up."

It was simple enough. The haustra of the colon would be the large intestine, so the vitamins went there. Rugae were the folds of the stomach, so the container of octopus so labeled went there. And the only spot left was the small intestine, so there went the pats of butter.

Still, nothing happened.

"What the heck?!" German started pacing. "This thing's our only way out of here... Are you sure you've got them in the right spots, Cera?"

"Yeah." Frowning, she crossed her arms.

Solo looked over her work before leaning his shoulders back again. "If you ask me, the butter looks a little lonely."

"The butter?" She looked at the dent in the small intestine before going through the things she had collected. Solo had brought it up...

"Of course!" She threw the bread in.

A sudden clanking came from beneath Science Girl's abdomen.

"Huh?" She quickly ducked over to check.

German's eyes were wide. "A compartment opened up!"

Utami pulled at the little shelf that had appeared and found a keycard in the shallow recess. [黃龍] was printed across its yellow front side.

"Solo?" She held it up to him.

"What, you can't figure it out?" He smiled. "Yellow Dragon."

"Another of the nine types?" Hex responded.

Solo answered with a nod.

"There's no keycard slot on the lock, though." German was by the door, crossing and uncrossing his arms. "It's not going to get us out of here, I don't think."

Five sighed. "There's another puzzle to solve, you mean? I can't say I'm surprised."

Frowning, Utami paced the room. Nothing different jumped out at her.

"All I've got is this pitcher..."

Hex's fingers brushed her upper lip. "The KILL HER one?"

"Yeah."

"I guess the time has come." Five smirked, holding up a relaxed hand. "Cera or Hex? Who goes?"

Hex sighed. "Don't joke about that. It's even less funny the second time."

Five hunched a little and muttered, "I'm just trying to get us out of here, man."

"Come on, no killing the lovely ladies." Solo slid a hand back through his hair. "We ought to consider the other girl in here."

Five frowned at him. "German?"

"What?!" German stomped towards them. "Hey, come on. I'm bigger than both of you."

Solo shrugged.

Leaving the boys to it, Utami found herself drawn back to Science Girl's side. "Is it you? Am I supposed to kill you, Science Girl?"

"How do you kill a plastic mannequin?" Hex tapped at her top bun.

"Well, the message is on a pitcher of water..."

"So you have to pour water on her?" Hex frowned, arms folded. "You're supposed to have water in you, though. Isn't the human body 70% water or something?"

Utami shifted her weight more onto her left foot, her hip jutting in compensation. "Yeah. You can still get water poisoning, but it takes, like, eight liters. This pitcher definitely doesn't hold that much."

"So you're saying we can't give her more water than she can take?" Five frowned, his scar puckering between his eyebrows. "How are we supposed to kill her with the pitcher, then? Whack her with it really hard?"

"I think we're still supposed to use water..." Utami took another good look at Science Girl before it clicked. Holding up the heavy pitcher, she put the spout over the plastic model's hollow lungs and poured. The water pooled with a quiet sound and distorted the blue surface beneath it until the pitcher was empty. A few final drips sent ripples through the surface that ended just beneath the outline of the lungs.

Something beeped.

"Hey! The door lock!" German, the closest of any of them, called.

"The lock?" Utami turned her head to look and could immediately see the change. Rather than the single red light at the top, a green dot glowed.

"All right!" Hex briefly pumped a fist before grinning at Utami. "Good job." She shook her head. "Death by drowning. I should have figured that out."

Utami somberly put the empty pitcher down and thanked Science Girl for her sacrifice.

"Nice work, Cera." Solo stepped towards the ice machine. "I'm just going to grab something to drink while we're in a room with running water. Mind if I use that pitcher?"

"Uh, sure." She handed it over as he plunged his fingers into the ice.

"Aw, come on." German wrinkled his nose. "The scoop's _right there_."

Solo shrugged. "You could have come over here first if you wanted a perfectly clean scoop of ice, friend." He pulled out a handful of cubes before pausing. He stood with his left hand in the air for a minute too long.

"Earth to Solo?" Five stepped up behind him. "What's wrong? You prefer crushed ice?"

Solo shook his head, holding out the ice for the others to look at. Nothing seemed strange about them.

"It's not cold," he said.

"What?" Hex frowned at his palm. "Do you have nerve damage or something?"

He shook his head. "Not unless it happened just now."

Utami stared at the pristine cubes in his hand that weren't even glistening from his body heat. Ice that wasn't cold... Ice... that wouldn't melt...

Surely... Surely it couldn't be...?

Utami...


	9. Said Nothing

Author's Note: Thanks to nyarinpa and ndrwhptn for all of your support! I really do appreciate it.

And I apologize for the wait. I had a busy weekend.

* * *

Utami shook her head silently. What had she been planning to say? That Solo held a dangerous isoform of ice that still sounded fictional even to her? It was silly. There had to be a more logical explanation for the not-cold ice.

Hex was ready to investigate it herself. "Let me see," she said, picking out an ice cube and looking it over. She squeezed it between her thumb and forefinger. "Huh... It doesn't even feel like ice. Or maybe I'm just too used to feeling the cold, and the slick as it starts to melt in my hand." She switched it to the palm of her other hand and scrutinized it.

"I'm still getting a drink." Solo cranked the sink faucet and let it blast into the pitcher for a few moments. He thought for a second before throwing a single ice cube into the mix. Hex raised an eyebrow at him, but he shrugged. "Might still cool it down."

German scratched just under his collar. "I-I have a bad feeling about this."

Utami looked at him sideways. "You have a bad feeling about everything."

"Yeah, man." Five leaned back against the island countertop. "It's just ice."

German sighed but left it alone to go pace by the door.

Utami eyed the ice machine as Solo took a swig of his well-deserved water. She was a bit thirsty, too, but the ice admittedly made her nervous. German was pretty paranoid, but paranoid people could still very well be right. Even if it wasn't what she thought it was, it was strange. She didn't want to touch it. Curiosity still drew her to it, but she kept her hands clamped behind her back.

A gasping sound made her whip around, her hair flying into her face from the momentum. She hurriedly pushed her braids aside as Solo came into view, half-collapsed and keeping himself up with one strained arm on the counter. The dropped pitcher spilled into the sink behind him as he grabbed at his throat with his free hand, his jaw hanging open.

Utami's heart leapt to her own throat as she surged towards him.

"What the—Solo!" Leaning forward, Hex made a motion to throw her ice cube back into the container, but it clung to her hand.

Utami got behind him to put her arms around his abdomen and thrust, but a few tries did no good. Was she not strong enough? Was she going at the wrong angle? He was too tall—she couldn't pull up.

Whatever was wrong, she had to fix it fast. Solo's lips had begun to change color, and a lack of oxygen would kill brain cells like nothing else.

"German!" she shouted, pulling away from Solo and lunging towards the door where German was frozen. "Can you do abdominal thrusts? Please!" She pointed back at Solo. "Mine weren't dislodging anything, but I think someone your size should be able to... to..."

To what? What was Solo even choking on? He had only drunk some water.

As German stumbled towards the man in distress, Utami's gaze slid back to the sink. Out from the sideways pitcher, a trail led to the sink drain, but it was no longer water. Shining crystals of ice snakes from the interior of the pitcher to the sink and up the edge where the marker read "KILL HER."

Utami knew it wasn't cold enough for the water to have reached its freezing point. It must have been the strange ice cube—a seed crystal. Undoubtedly it had caused the normal water to freeze at room temperature in the sink. Solo must have drunk some little fragment of that seed.

He was choking on [ice-9].

"O-ow! What the..."

German was shaking, but he had obviously had some basic life support training, so Utami left it to him and turned to Hex.

"What's wrong?"

"My hand..." She was panting, sweat slicking her bangs to her face as she held her hand out. The ice cube sat in her palm, more little crystals forming jagged spikes in every direction. Some spread along her skin, abandoning the main shape of the cube. Beneath, her hand was blackish. At first Utami thought it was just a bruise, but a rather fresh one on the flesh beneath her thumb was far from the same darkness.

"Frostbite...?" she murmured.

Hex echoed her and withdrew her hand, gripping her wrist—a few small ice crystals had formed on her fingertips. "But it's not cold. Frostbite is from the cold diverting blood away, isn't it? Ugh..."

"Hex?" Five stepped closer to her but maintained a gap. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know. I..." She half-stumbled, half-shuffled to the other side of the island. "I just have to sit down or I'm going to throw up."

Utami turned on Five. "Go get a chair from the cafeteria!"

He flinched back but hurried out the double doors.

As Hex slumped, her shoulders hard against the side of the island, Utami suddenly noticed a lack of motion on the other side of the room. A chill crossed her shoulders as she turned to German and Solo.

German had his back pressed against the counter, both hands on the edge in a death grip. Solo had slid onto the ground, face-up, frothing at the mouth. No, not froth.

"[Ice-9]..."

Utami managed the single word before her breath left her. Solo... Maybe there was still a way to break a hole through the ice so he could breathe... Or... Or a tracheotomy? Where was she supposed to cut for that?

Without a solid plan, she hurried toward the cleaver to try pulling it off, but a clicking noise stopped her. It was just a single sound, then a little clatter. She had a premonition of what it was before she turned around.

Solo's bracelet was on the ground, its metal bonds pulled back like the legs of a dead spider. Solo's pale wrist only brushed it.

The sound of labored breathing dragged her gaze back up to German.

"It's," he wheezed, "only supposed to come off if..."

If he left the building... or if he was dead.

Utami's legs suddenly gave out, her head slamming into the counter on the way down. Swords of pain sliced through her from head to foot as she gasped for breath. A silent moment passed before her vision began to clear and she gained control over her shaking hands.

At this level, she was face-to-face with Solo. His eyes were still open, bloodshot. His mouth gaped with interconnected ice crystals spilling out like vomit. How long had it even been since he had begun to choke? Mere moments? Longer...?

A grinding ringing drew her attention back to German. Instead of standing stone-like at the counter, he was by the ice machine, cleaver in hand.

"German...?"

He took slow steps towards her, his boots thumping on the tile. "I think... I think I can cut it out of him. P-people can still be rescuscit-tated, right?"

Utami opened her mouth to reply, but it only sent a jolt of pain through her jaw.

"What... What about Hex?" she finally got out. With some difficulty she pushed and pulled herself back to her feet, farther from the dead man's face just next to her. German knelt by the ground, silent save for breathing. White spots still danced across the kitchen as he forced her gaze towards Hex.

Stumbling, Utami pulled herself along to the other side of the island. Hex was slumped on the ground, head hanging limply beside her right knee. Her arms rested at her sides with both bare wrists against the corner of the floor and island.

What... What had happened? The ice in her hand had only just made it past her wrist. Why had her bracelet come off? Was she really...

Utami stopped mid-thought and rose back to her full height. The ice machine...

Mechanically, she approached the container of ice and stared into it. Her head... Her head hurt so much. She should put ice on it. She should... She should...

"No!"

With a gasp, she pulled back, but an inexorable force drew her back. Her hands clamped on either side of the machine, elbows slowly bending to bring her in.

What was she doing? If she touched that ice, she would die. Why did she... Why did she want to stick her head in so badly...?

"I guess you're not any good as a receiver."

She couldn't turn to see the speaker before a hand seized the back of her head and slammed her into the ice face-first. The cubes gave a high-pitched clatter as some flew away, but too many still pressed against her cheeks, her forehead, her eyes.

"I still did pretty good, though, don't you think?" The man behind her barked a laugh just as monotone as the rest of his speech. "The morphogenetic field is truly a remarkable thing. 'Hey, Owata, aren't you a little thirsty'? 'Hey, Kibowa, wouldn't some ice help that head injury'?"

Utami gripped the machine harder, struggling to push herself away from the ice. Something was already prickling at her eyes even though she had shut them tight. She kicked out at the person behind her, but he dodged it easily, his hand barely shifting.

"But it's all right. I was once as useless as you. And look at me now. Or can you even?"

Utami thrashed her neck back, but she couldn't quite get out of the way of the ice. By the time the pressure on the back of her head lightened and she was able to break free, ice clung to her face. With a gasp of a whimper, she scrabbled her hands at the melded cubes to get them off, but it was no good. If she pulled any harder, the skin would have to be ripped off, too.

Would she survive that? Was there any other way?

Shards of pain were lodged deep in her eyes. The ice had undoubtedly made it far since they were wet to begin with. But how far? How long did she have? Would it be able to freeze her optic nerve? Cross straight to her brain?

A pained whimper split her lips as she vainly tugged at her mask of ice once more.

"I have to get it off...! _Get it off!_ "

She let go before the ice could cling to her fingers. A deep, throbbing pain had entered her forehead, and she didn't know how much longer she could hold on. There had to be a way out. There had to be. If she just... If she could just heat the ice to 96 degrees...

With a gasp, she turned and ran towards the short hall. Her shoulder rammed into the bakery tray, disheveling the shelves with a loud clang as she staggered forward in the darkness. The rough wall scraped her fingers as she frantically made her way forward and took a sharp turn to her right. Her hands were quaking so hard she could barely feel her way to the hot water dispenser. Would it be enough?

"There are no other options...!"

She cried out as the pain set her face alight, her frozen eyes still aching. Swallowing it down, she ran her fingers over the water dispenser, ramming them harder into anything that seemed to stick out.

"Please... Please!"

The man in the other room continued laughing as the pain in her eyes faded. Her hands continued to rub the dispenser, but she couldn't recall why. She could feel more ice crystals forming along her jaw, but the pain continued to fade.

Her legs gave out again, and she made no motion to catch herself. She couldn't. She had no control over her body—over anything.

Even the sharp jolt of pain as something cracked against the floor faded as Utami went limp.

* * *

 **Congratulations! You have reached the [Ice Cube Ending].**


	10. Brought Up Ice-9

Author's Note: We've already had our first alternate ending. We're picking up here at the end of the eighth chapter, if Utami had chosen differently.

As always, reviews are greatly appreciated.

* * *

"Solo, wait!" Utami lunged forward, grabbing his left elbow. "Don't try to put that in any water. Don't—don't even keep touching it." She jerked his elbow until the ice cubes fell back into the pile.

Solo frowned, withdrawing his hand to the inner edge of the ice machine. "Why? What is it?"

Utami swallowed, withdrawing her hand, and started to explain the phenomenon of [ice-9]. Although she still felt as though she were telling them the details of a myth, the others listened attentively.

German scratched a little patch of stubble beneath his sideburn. "But 96 degrees is below human body temperature. It w-wouldn't hurt us, right?" He cast a nervous glance at the ice machine.

Hex shook her head. "That's _core_ body temperature. The surface of your skin, your extremities... That's not 98.6 degrees. That's why time of death has to be determined with something like the rectal temperature."

The corner of Five's mouth twitched. "Why are you bringing up something like timing of death right now?"

Hex sighed. "I'm just elaborating on a relevant fact that anyone with half a brain knows."

"So Science Girl is out of luck, huh?" Solo responded with a smile. He finally turned away from the ice machine, his left hand sliding from the edge down to his side. Utami let out a breath of relief.

Solo sauntered back to the sink. "I'm still getting a drink, though."

He cranked the faucet, a splashing shot of water shooting drops of water across the counter before he hastily turned the pressure down. Hex sighed loudly and wiped a stray drop off her cheek.

Five snickered. "What, you're not used to guys—"

"Stop." Hex gave him a deadpan stare until he frowned and self-consciously scratched at his facial scar.

Solo took a swig of water as German tugged on the outside door handle and wedged his foot in the gap that opened. Utami gave him a look, but he crossed his arms.

"This place is all about doors suddenly being locked, right? I'm not taking any chances with this one."

"Fair enough." Solo wiped his mouth on his sleeve, at the very edge past the buckles, before pausing. He frowned as he hand his hand in front of his face, curling and uncurling his fingers.

Utami leaned her shoulder against the wall. "What's wrong? Arthritis acting up?"

"Ouch." He blinked at her. "how much older than you d'you think I am? Only been around for 29 years."

He turned his attention back to his hand as Utami shrugged. "You're still eight years older than me. That's almost a decade."

Hex smirked. "Doesn't seem very romantic to me."

Solo groaned at that before shaking out his wrist. "Anyway, my hand is hurting for some reason. He squinted at the spot one would feel to take a pulse. "Weird bruise all of a sudden, too."

"So you bashed your hand on something while we were investigating," Five said. "Big deal. You've had your drink; can we leave now?"

"Hang on. Solo?" Utami stepped towards him. "Can I take a look at it?"

"Certainly, Miss Bio Major." He pulled up his sleeve a little as she leaned in to examine his hand. A fresh bruise, still very purple, obscured the small veins of his wrist. Something seemed a bit off about the of the vessels half-hidden beneath his bracelet, but she couldn't tell precisely what. Instead she moved on to his hand. Although Solo had a rather dark skin tone, the palm appeared paler in comparison than it should have. Once again, nothing in particular gave her any clues, but a nagging feeling began to take hold in her chest.

Finally her gaze fell on his fingers. The coloring there seemed off as well—a bit white here, red there, yellow there. Only when she saw the ice crystals on each of his fingertips did her face go pale.

"Ugh." He pulled his hand back, bringing his clawed right hand over.

"No! Wait!" Utami tugged his hand back before he could scratch it. "Don't... Don't touch anything else with this hand, okay?"

"Okay...?" He peered down at her with his eyebrows raised and his mouth tightened into a small frown. "What is it?" He began to curl his left fingers, presumably to scratch his palm, but only made it a few degrees before his hand refused to do more than twitch.

"What—" He stared down at his fingers as black blisters began to form—"What the...?!"

German pressed himself back against the door without moving his foot. "What's happening? Th-the water—was the water poisoned?!"

"There's no reason for it to be..." Five gripped the island counter as if his legs would go out from under him otherwise. "Unless the poison gas The Malefactor has stored somehow got into it..."

Utami shook her head, trying to find her voice. "Cyanide wouldn't do this. It's not the water. This was the hand you stuck into the ice machine, wasn't it?"

Solo nodded, his free hand gripping one of the straps crossing from one side of his jacket to the other.

"This has to be... some weird form of frostbite. The kind your would get at room temperature with this strange type of ice." She made herself breathe. "And the bruise... A large ice crystal probably sheared through the vessel lining, making the blood leak out. But if..." Her mouth remained open yet she failed to continue.

"But if _what_?" Solo responded, his voice a pitch higher than normal.

"We—" she took a step back—"we need to tourniquet his arm, right now."

Five's brow furrowed, his scar puckering. "But it's just a bruise. He's not exactly bleeding out."

Utami shook her head hard. "I'm not worried about the blood flow that way. I'm worried about the blood flow back to the heart and lungs. If a bigger ice crystal gets loose into his circulation..."

"Hang on, hang on." Hex ran her hands through her short hair. "Are you saying he's likely to have a heart attack? Because I've never in my life heard of an ice embolism."

"Until today, you've never heard of ice-9," Utami retorted.

German's hands trembled until he clamped them together. "So even if it gets to the core temperature, it might not have time to melt before..."

"Well, how about we stop yammering about it and do something?!" Solo finally shouted, ripping his left arm out of its sleeve. "Let's tear something off for a tourniquet!" He hunched suddenly, his teeth gritted and good hand clenched.

Five gripped either side of the seam holding Solo's sleeve to the rest of the jacket. "Mind if I use this?"

"Only if it doesn't work."

Utami backed out of the way as the man with glasses wrapped the length of blue cloth just above Solo's elbow. The skin beneath blanched a bit as Five tightened it with the help of the screwdriver. Solo cringed in pain but kept his mouth shut.

"Okay. Um..." German began to pace but stopped before he could remove his foot from the door. "Okay. Is everything good now?"

Five looked over his work. "That's certainly as tight as I'm going to get it."

"Sure feels like it," Solo said through his teeth. He flexed his left wrist a bit.

Hex hopped off the countertop to her feet. "Hopefully you don't lose your arm from that, then."

Utami took another look at Solo's hand before going still, her breaths rasping. "I... I think..."

She looked up, the ends of her arm warmers wadded in her fists. "He may have already lost it."

"...Don't just say something like that with no explanation!" Solo glared at her before letting out a breath and passing his right hand over his hair. "Please... Please explain yourself."

Utami silently gestured for him to check out his hand. He rose it shakily to eye level and swallowed. The black blistering had spread to his wrist, and a lone trail of ice crystals stretched across the back of his bracelet to his forearm.

Hex folded her arms, looking down. "Cutting off circulation won't do any good if the ice still spreads closer to the surface. That strip of cloth isn't going to stop it."

"So what, then?" Solo was leaning heavily on the island, sweat slicking his forehead. "I'm just going to freeze to death anyway?"

"Not if..." Utami felt the blood drain from her face.

Solo chuckled, though his smile hadn't returned. "That's not a good place to trail off and do nothing, Cera."

"Right. I mean..." She broke eye contact, staring at the ice machine instead. "Not if we separate the 'infected' part from the rest... more... more permanently."

"Plain English, please?" German's expression was contorted enough she thought he probably understood.

"We..." She swallowed, looking him in the eye. "He won't have any more problems with the ice if we amputate his forearm."

"Whoa, whoa!" Solo took a step back, as if her intent alone was enough to sever his arm. "That's a little rash, isn't it? Maybe we can find something to melt it off. 96 degrees, right? It's not impossible."

"There's no heating equipment in here, and the hot water dispenser doesn't dispense any hot water," Five said.

"We can look elsewhere," Solo countered.

Hex put her hands on her hips and frowned. "Exactly how long do you think we have? Do you know how lucky you're going to have to get to find something that temperature in a school building? If anything, it would be behind another [numbered door], and there's no way you're putting your hand on a RED like that."

Solo cast another look down at his hand, all of which was covered with at least a layer of frost. He gritted his teeth and swore in a hoarse whisper. "German."

The boy gave a start but looked at him.

"There's a cleaver on the side of the ice machine."

German's mouth hung open. He turned towards the machine but looked down at his foot.

"I'll keep the door open," Five snapped, lunging for the handle. "Just go!"

Swallowing, German nodded and hurried towards the ice machine. It took him two tries, but he managed to pry the cleaver handle from the powerful magnet with a loud grunt.

"Now come over here," Solo said through clenched teeth, his blackened hand resting on the countertop, "and bring the blade down on my elbow as hard as you possibly can."

"Wha—Wh-wh-what?!" German staggered back, the cleaver in his hand quivering. "I—There's no way—I-I-I—!"

"Give me that." Hex took the handle and yanked it out of his hand without meeting much resistance. "Solo! Are you sure about this?"

"Unless Miss Bio Major has a better idea, I'm going to have to say no." He cringed in another wave of pain, his wrist twitching.

Utami shook her head, clenching her eyes shut for a moment to keep back tears. Had she really suggested something so outrageous? But how else were they supposed to deal with the situation? There wasn't time, and she didn't know enough about ice-9 to think of all the havoc it could and could not wreak on the human body. It was just an arm, right? It was better than risking his life, right?

Hex grabbed the back of Solo's jacket and pulled it over his head. Once he realized what she was doing, he started to shuffle the intact sleeve off.

"We're holding this up to catch any blood spatter," she said, eyeing Utami. She was clearly standing too close to be safe, so she hurried to the door by Five and German. "Like heck I'm going through this only to get a seed crystal landing me."

She nodded at Solo. "Hold on tight, and try not to bite your tongue off. Ready?"

He shook his head but shut his eyes.

Hex took a deep breath, and, with a savage cry, slammed the sharp end of the cleaver down onto Solo's elbow. He screamed, knees buckling, but he caught himself with his other hand. His left wrist stayed on the counter, and Hex held her breath before chopping down again with the same severity. More blood leaked out, frayed tendons and muscle allowing Solo's dead hand to pivot a little. Panting, Hex lifted up the cleaver and brought it down one more time, Solo shouting as he lost contact with the island and crumpled to the ground. Hex followed him to drag the point of the cleaver across his elbow once more, sawing the last ligaments in two.

Blood continued to seep out of the frozen arm as well as the stump left beneath Solo's tourniquet, but there was no spurting. It was still a worrisome wound, no doubt, but it would be all right if he got to a hospital as soon as they escaped. He still knelt there crying from the pain, trying not to look at the icy human arm on the ground in front of him.

Meanwhile, Hex let go of his jacket with an exhale and stood, chucking the cleaver into the ice machine and slamming the plastic lid shut.

"Holy hell, Hex," Five muttered, holding an arm up as if for protection.

She met his gaze evenly. "I'm a criminal lawyer specializing in homicide cases. I've seen worse things than a man without a forearm." Wiping sweat from her brow, she looked over her shoulder at Solo. "We'll go whenever you're ready."

He didn't budge from the spot where he wept openly.

Utami swallowed. Surely there was some painkiller in this building, somewhere? She didn't have any on her, but...

As she went to Science Girl and opened up the bottle of vitamins to check, she heard something from Solo that wasn't entirely a choked sob.

 _"...she's gone..."_

Utami froze before quickly investigating the pills—nothing useful—and stepping towards him. "Solo..." She lowered herself into a crouch, careful not to get too close to the little puddle of blood that was already mostly frozen. "What was that...?"

He turned to her, tears still streaming down his face, his expression twisted into a painful smile. "She's gone now... Every last trace... The mark on my ring finger... Even the bracelet she made..." He gripped his stomach with one arm as he hunched over sobbing.

Utami turned to his bracelet, but it was tightly frozen in place. "Solo..." She swallowed before trying to get his attention. His bleary eyes tracked the movement as she put her wrist near his face, palm towards him. "I... still have mine." She forced a smile. "All of the rest of us do. So... just stay with us. I know it's not much, but..." She trailed off, looking down at his lost arm.

Solo's crying began to lose some of its volume., and by the time she turned to face him again, he met her eye.

"We... need to get going, don't we?" he asked.

She looked down and nodded. "Don't push yourself too hard, though. Tell me if you feel weak, or like you might be going into shock... That's the most dangerous thing now."

"Yes, ma'am." He sucked in a choppy breath and began to pull himself to his feet. Without a second hand to take, Utami couldn't help, so she just gave him a bit of space.

"All right, fellas." He gripped his left shoulder. "Let's go."

He took step by solemn step up to the doorway until Five removed his foot and held it open. They had cleared Door 6...

But it didn't feel nearly as good as Utami's first door had.

 **YOU FOUND IT**


	11. Diverging Paths

Utami entered a rather dark hallway, her heart still thudding away as she tried to figure out what direction she should take.

Hex pushed past her to check out the left side. "We've got one door with a keycard over here. Nothing else."

"What's the symbol on it?" Solo still clutched his shoulder as he followed her over.

Utami and German checked the other side of the hall, but it ended at the far end of the kitchen room. On the opposite side, however, was a thick, metal door.

"Another one, huh?" German muttered.

Utami scanned the blood-red [8] on the door one more time—the lighting was poor, but there was still no doubt about the [numbered door]—before going after Solo and Hex. Five had beaten her to it, and German followed.

"It's the yellow dragon." Solo turned, the knot in his throat bobbing. "Cera. Do you still have the keycard?"

Nodding, she reached into one of her cargo pockets and pulled it out. The [黃龍] card... She couldn't even make out the characters in this light, but she hadn't put any other cards in that pocket, and it probably hadn't suddenly changed identity.

She let Solo take the card, turn it in his fingers, and swipe it by the only door. A double beep and a short clicking noise followed.

Five smiled. "That's a good sound."

Hex put her hands on the handlebar of the door and tried again. It gave, and she stepped inside, brighter light pouring out from the room beyond.

"It's a stairwell," she called, holding the door open. "Let's see where we can get out."

The silent consensus was to go downstairs. German led the way, followed by Five, Utami, Solo, and Hex. A few stairs, a turn, and a few more stairs later, the first door appeared. It didn't have a card scanner, but she didn't remember if the third floor had one on the inside. She put a hand on the handle.

"Cera, what are you doing?" Hex seized her shoulder. "That's the second floor. You know, the one swamped with smoke?"

Utami turned on her. "This part of it might not be."

"Might?" Solo was already halfway down the next section of stairs. "Listen, I've already come close enough to death for one hour. I ain't going through there unless there's no other exit."

Utami pulled back, and Hex went past her to the next flight. Five lingered for a second but shook his head and moved on.

"Well, I might as well try it," she muttered. "It's not like it'll all come pouring in at once."

With another glance behind her, as if Solo was going to tackle her if she went any further, she pushed the door bar in. The pressure on her hands built up for a moment before the door swung open.

She gasped and popped her head through the small gap she had created. The hallway beyond was well-lit, its carpet the same shades of blue and purple as that on the first floor. Solid rows of fluorescent lights crossed the ceiling, unobscured by smoke or anything else.

"First floor's locked!" Five called from below. "But there's another one farther down!"

A moment later, the footsteps ceased again, followed by a disappointed grunt.

"This one's locked, too," Hex called.

"Spirit dragon keycard," Solo added, voice rough.

German's voice came next. "Cera? Are you still in here?"

Utami leaned towards the downward stairs but couldn't yet see the others coming up. "Second floor's unlocked."

"What?" The stairs clanged furiously as Hex came up. "You opened it anyway?!"

"There's no smoke—"

Hex charged past her to peek through. "Hmm."

"Hmm?" Utami pouted, crossing her arms. "I find the way out, and all I get is a ' _hmm_ '?"

Hex waved the comment off as the others caught up. Utami dared to hold the door open wider and looked through again as she did so.

"Ich—Z-Zirconium!" She gripped the edge of the door for another moment before running into the hall.

She could hear German jumping behind her—"Cera!"—but she kept going.

Across the hall, her brother stood still but raised his eyebrows.

"How did you get here?" She slowed as the gap closed, giving him a squeeze of the hand.

He squeezed back but just watched her. He hadn't gone through the same door, so obviously both doors led to the same hallway. Exactly how, though? There had to be another stairwell since they had both gone down a floor, and the second floor was locked out in the normal stairwells. They could show each other their finds once the whole gang was together.

"Guys!" Zirconium called over his shoulder, taking a single backwards step to look around the corner.

A high-pitched voice was the first to respond. "Hey, Zirconium's found something!"

"Wha—Pear, wait up!"

Zirconium continued to lean back, his head around the corner, until the muffled footsteps caught up with him.

Pear, Lucky, and Zirconium—they must have gone through door number [4]. Utami did a quick head count and concluded that everyone had made it to their current location.

"Wha—" Lucky's eyes went wide. "S-Solo? You—You used to have a left hand, didn't you?"

At that, Zirconium and Pear turned to Solo. His expression was neutral, but remnants of sweat and tears still streaked his face. With the attention of the others on him, he wiped a hand across his face.

"I must look like crap right now." He aimed an apologetic smile at Pear. "But, yes, Lucky, something unfortunate happened behind [Door 6]. I suggest we leave it alone for the rest of this sick little game." He swallowed, his smile quivering a bit before he regained his composure.

He response was met with silent stares, two at his arm and one behind him, as if the [ice-9] had crept after them this far. Utami quickly checked, but no ice crystals came from the stairwell or crusted Solo's truncated arm.

Zirconium shut his eyes, his brow furrowed. "And your bracelet..."

Hex nodded. "We won't be going back for it."

"At least freezing didn't detonate it." German looked at Solo. "You're probably actually safe now. From the gut bomb, you know..." He put a hand over his stomach and glanced at his bracelet as if he was considering chopping it off himself.

"Well, we'll all be safe from those if we just keep going." Five stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his acid-washed jeans. "I guess no one's been through [Door 1], and we found [Door 8] just outside of the stairwell behind us on the third floor."

Pear nodded. "We didn't run into any more [numbered doors], but we did find a keycard."

"Another dragon?" Utami stepped up to her.

Pear bobbed her head and dug into her back pockets, her thin outer skirt rippling from the motion. After a moment, she offered her a plain white keycard with [神龍] printed across it.

Utami looked over her shoulder. "Solo?"

Face still pale, he approached. "Spirit dragon."

"The one on the zeroth floor?" Hex stepped up next to him, and Utami adjusted her grip so both of them could see the symbols. "That'll probably give us access to whatever's past the hidden stairwell down there."

Lucky gripped his arms. "Do you think we'll find more doors?"

"Seems likely." Utami took a step backwards. "Whether they're numbered or not, we'll just have to wait and see."

Hex put one hand on her hip. "I'm not much for waiting. Cera, and whoever else wants to see what's on the first floor, come on."

She led the way, giving Utami no choice but to hurry after her. A moment later, and the whole group was trailing behind them.

"Don't kick the pen out of the doorway, just in case," Hex called as she opened the door and started down the stairs. She didn't wait for them all to assemble on the bottom flight before demanding the keycard from Utami. Instead of stubbornly swiping it herself, she went ahead and handed it over—this time. Hex lined it up and slid it through the slot.

 _Beep_.

The door audibly unlocked, and Hex tossed the keycard back as she pushed the handle in. Utami barely caught the valuable [神龍] card as the door creaked open.

"There has to be a light switch—aha." Hex felt around before stopping as the room ahead blazed with sudden light. Utami cringed, but it dulled quickly enough for her to step out after the woman with the [6] bracelet.

The room ahead was rather small and cramped, although it reached out far enough to include what appeared to be another small stairwell. White tiles specked with grey and black covered the ground, and the low ceiling was held up by intermittent square columns. A few clumps of janitorial supplies were pushed against any which wall. Water spots hit the ceiling, but the floor was dry. Some shelving held blankets and bottles of water, and a few things Utami couldn't make out from where she stood.

"It's some kind of emergency cellar," German said, stepping out a little farther into the room.

"Something tells me it's going to fill with gas as well as any other room, though." Five crossed his arms before pausing. "Hey, in the corner..."

Utami followed his gaze to the right, where something more like a dumbwaiter than a proper elevator crouched. A blackened metal grid surrounded it on three sides, but the sliding door was a shining silver.

"There's no way!" Pear skittered up to it, ducking up and down as she scrutinized the crimson [5].

German raised his eyebrows. "I couldn't even fit in that. Maybe by myself, but... That can't really be a [numbered door], can it?"

"It's got a RED." Utami stepped up behind Pear but didn't try putting her hand on the bolted-down scanner. "It says VACANT, so it seems functional."

"Well, you can count me and German out as far as that one goes," Solo said, leaning back against the washed-out white wall.

Hex folded her arms in thought. "We've got three more doors to worry about now. With seven bracelets, there's no way we can take all of them on at once, anyway. We can probably save [5] for later, if we still need to investigate it."

"So..." Lucky struggled for a second. "That leaves [1] and [8], right?"

Hex nodded. "Time to stake our claims again, guys. Solo and German, you can wait until the end since neither of you is going to impact the digital root." She crossed her ankles. "I'm leaning towards [Door 1] myself."

The others began to choose: [8] was favored by Pear and Five, while Zirconium and Lucky were interested in [1].

"Cera?" Zirconium asked.

Utami paused to think, her gaze on the ground. She twisted one of her braids between her fingers. "I think... we've gone through an awful lot to get access to [Door 8]. I'd like to go through there if I can."

"All right." Hex pulled out her file. "Let's see who's going to have to give."

She hummed a blank tune as she checked off combinations of numbers. "We can do Zir, me, and German through [1] and Pear, Cera, Five, and Lucky through [8]. Solo can go wherever he wants, I guess."

"Might as well even it out with [Door 1]," Solo drawled.

Utami let out a breath. "That works for me. Lucky?"

The boy with gloves perked up. "Huh?"

"Are you all right with [Door 8]?"

"Oh, uh..." Startled, he rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. That's fine. Whatever works for the rest of you."

Hex clapped her file shut. "Then what are we standing around for? Let's get back upstairs."

She strode to the door, Lucky and German following after her immediately. Utami hung back for a moment, drifting to where Solo stood against the wall. He glanced down at her.

"How are you feeling?" she started, clasping her hands in front of her and looking at his stump. Crusted blood was in haphazard clumps, and the unclean cut left bits of muscle, tendon, and nerve hanging out. She had no supplies to treat it further, and infection probably wouldn't settle if he got help once they left the building, but...

"Still chugging along." He pushed himself off the wall by arching his back.

"Are you feeling faint or dizzy, or anything like that?"

"Not particularly. Just hurts like hellfire, but I'm guessing that's normal." He paused. "Some headache, maybe a touch dizzy. Not enough to throw off my balance."

Utami nodded. "If it gets any worse, make sure to slow down, lie down, be as comfortable as possible. And—" she laughed weakly—"because of the blood loss, I'd recommend drinking a lot of water, but..."

He shrugged, maintaining a smile. "Maybe they'll have some tea here."

"Yeah. Maybe so."


	12. Door 8

The presence of the kitchen behind her gave Utami chills down her back. But it was time to move on. They had to figure the rest of this out in a matter of hours; the school bell had given its fifth chime already. What's past was past. Ahead was [Door 8].

"Okay! We ready?" Pear hopped right up to the RED, pushing her jangling jewelry back to better expose her [bracelet].

"Uh, sure." Lucky stepped behind her as she verified.

A gloved hand pressed against the RED, then Five's gauntlet just above his wrist, then Utami's own hand. She pulled down on the lever, and [Door 8] swung in. Pear ran through, the rest of the group coming after her before the door could shut itself. The metallic clang echoed from all directions, leaving them in a dimness only lit by the reddish skulls on their bracelets.

"Over here!" Five's voice came from Utami's right. She craned her neck to see the red light of the DEAD some ten feet away.

Footsteps thudded and squeaked as the four of them hurried over.

 _Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Clack._

A dying noise accompanied the disappearance of the bracelets' beeping, the skull on Utami's wrist fading into a neutral [3].

"Okay." Utami backed up, managing not to bump into anyone. "Now, where are the lights?"

Lucky's voice came from ahead, his shadow blocking the DEAD's light. "There aren't any switches on this side."

"I'll try the other, then." Utami held her arms out, bumping into two of the others before she reached the cold metal of the door. Her fingers trailed it until she reached the other side. She swept her palms across the flat but rough surface and only found a metal plate about the size of her head screwed tightly to the wall.

"Waaagh!"

Pear's shriek was accompanied by a crash, followed by the sound of clattering and rolling.

"Pear?" Lucky called, his voice changing in volume as he turned away from Utami.

"I'm okay! I just tripped on something." Pear shuffled something that sounded close to the floor before a beam of light suddenly shot across Utami's sandals. "Uwa!"

The group followed the beam to its strongest point—it came from a single circle, Pear's fingers lit up red by its edge.

"A flashlight?" Five approached, his canvas shoes casting tall shadows. "Was there more than one?"

"Sounded like it." Utami drew towards the only light in the room like a moth, kneeling on the polished, wooden floor. It only took a little bit of rummaging around before her hand ran into something soft.

"Sorry!" Lucky pulled his hand away quickly, snatching a different flashlight. Utami shrugged and picked out hers as Pear lifted the lit one into the air. The devices weren't that hard to figure out, so soon four beams of light were sweeping the room.

It was a large basketball court, a basket on each end as well as four smaller ones that hung from the ceiling along the sides. Bleachers ran most of the length of the sides, though the set by the [numbered door] was retracted into more of a wall. A large scoreboard hung against one corner, all of its lights of course off. Some metal plates were on either side of the extended bleachers, but only the last corner held another door.

Bleachers—numbered door—goals—scoreboard—open bleachers—the outside door.

 **SEEK A WAY OUT!**

Utami started by examining the metal plate by the [numbered door]. It was just the size she had felt it to be, the flat surface only broken by a screw in each corner.

"Huh? They're all different..." She prodded at the screw heads in case she was mistaken, but no two had the same pattern.

"That doesn't strike me as something normal," Five said, scratching the lower edge of his scar. "It's probably part of a puzzle."

"Hooray, more puzzles." Utami tried spinning one of the screws using her fingernail, but if she tried any harder she'd only injure herself.

"Four screwdrivers, huh?" Lucky ran his gloved fingers over the plate. "Slotted, Philips, square recess, spanner. I'll keep an eye out."

Pulling back, Utami shined her flashlight over the collapsed stands.

"Hopefully there's nothing on top, because there's no way I'll be able to climb this. It's just tall enough I could fall and break my neck trying."

Keeping the circle of light ahead of her, she walked down the side of the bleachers. At the very center, a laminated piece of paper was attached to the stands at eye level.

"THIRTY DEGREES FROM CORNER," it read.

"Hmm." Utami pulled it off, checking the back, but that was the only information the paper held.

"Thirty degrees..." Pear rubbed her lower lip. "Does it mean an angle or temperature?"

"Unless we find a thermostat, I'm going to guess angle," Utami replied, putting the paper away.

She looked over the rest of the bleachers, but nothing else caught her eye. Hopefully she wasn't missing anything due to the darkness...

The exit door was in front of her now, so she took a good look at doorknob wouldn't turn, but what may have been a keyhole was covered with a circle of metal. Wires ran from the circle to a pad implanted on the face of the door.

"Looks like a four-digit combination. Although there's an Enter key, so it could be less..." She tried the Enter key by itself, just in case, but all that got her was an angry buzz from the device. "Fine, then."

She came around to the closest goal. All of the lower surfaces were covered with blue padding. Utami felt around for a seam and tried to pull.

"Aah!" She nearly lost her balance as a sudden rip of Velcro loosened the padding in her grip.

"Whoa! Everything okay over there?" Lucky drew a finger across his eyebrows.

"I think so." Utami nodded at the goal. "Do you want to help me poke around in here to see if we're supposed to take this off?"

"Sure."

With a little grunting and scooting around, the pair was able to peel the blue cover off the very base of the goal. Utami shined her flashlight across the exposed black surface back and forth until something gleamed back.

"Hey!" Lucky cried. "We found one! Good job, Cera."

Utami bent to pick up the red-handled screwdriver and turned it in her hands.

"That one is the Philips," Lucky said, squinting at the tip. "It doesn't look like one of those that come with multiple tips... I guess that would be too easy."

Utami kept a tight hold on the screwdriver as she sidestepped the pile of padding to keep searching.

Now was as good a time as any to check the floor. Various straight and curved lines cut across it, some of the formed shapes colored in with orange paint. It looked like a normal basketball court, as far as she could tell. She wasn't exactly the right height to be too invested in that sport...

"Huh?" She stopped, the beam of her flashlight focused on a dark spot. She scurried forward, keeping the black plastic something in her sights. "What the heck is this thing?"

Pear stepped up, leaning in to investigate. "I mean, this is the school gym, right? There are probably one or three more of those if they're the holes for setting up nets."

"Nets?" Utami knelt by the plastic circle about the size of the bottom of a cup.

"Yeah! Volleyball, badminton..." She frowned. "I don't think you'd want to play tennis on a slick court like this, but you could probably set up one of those nets, too. You know, I bet it would be fun. As long as the ball still bounces normally—"

"We're trying not to _die_ here, Pear!" Five heaved a sigh. "Okay? I can take some of that, but please, try to stay a little bit more focused if at all possible." He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. "Your voice gives me a headache, honestly."

Utami crinkled her nose. "What a gentleman. You're never going to get a girlfriend if you act like that."

"Wha—Who said I don't have a girlfriend?!"

Pear snickered. "We can tell, Five. Are you ready to get back to the investigation now?" she singsonged.

Five shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. "Yeah..."

With that out of the way, Utami pried her fingers under the curved notch in the edge of the plastic. It came up easily, the lid flipping over to reveal something inside.

"It's not that deep, thankfully." Utami slipped her fingers in and pulled out some sort of crystal prism. "The flat surfaces are teardrop-shaped. Something like confetti is inside, but it isn't shiny, and it's not distributed evenly."

Lucky adjusted his gloves. "How do you even make stuff like that? I know there's glassblowing, but..."

"It's probably too smooth for that," Utami said as she stood. "I guess they can melt it into molds and just throw in some paper bits while they're at it."

"But wouldn't the paper, like, catch fire if it's that hot?"

Utami shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they soak it first. Maybe it's not paper. We'll just have to look it up once we get out of here."

"Ah, yeah..."

Utami scanned the court again, but Pear was already investigating another pole spot.

The girl with the star shirt shook her head. "Nothing here. Let me check the other half of the court." She made two more stops before declaring her lack of success.

Utami adjusted her grip on the flashlight and moved on to the wider set of bleachers. She opted to check the floor beneath it first, carefully navigating between two rusty-looking metal supports at the tall end.

"It's a spooky and mysterious feeling... Ducking around all the thin metal girders in the darkness, only one beam of light giving me any idea what's going on..."

She stepped forward, her pulse loud in her ears, her breath and footsteps the only other sound.

Something slammed into her back with a scream, making her scream. The something then backed up, giggling.

Face red, Utami turned to shine her flashlight directly in Pear's eyes. "What was that?!"

"You're the one who said it was spooky. You practically asked for it." Pear's grin was cheeky, even with her eyes squinted shut against the bright light.

Utami thunked the heel of her palm into the other girl's forehead. "If you jump me again, I'm taking your flashlight."

"Fair enough." She shielded her eyes with her hand before stepping back.

With a sigh, Utami continued her search as her heart rate returned to normal. Nothing was on the ground or attached to the stands but the metal struts. They weren't entirely regular, but she could still navigate them. She turned her flashlight above her, to the underside of the bleachers, but didn't see anything unusual as far as she could go without having to crouch.

"Am I going to have to crawl all the way under these?" She swept her flashlight across the lower part of the stands, but their stair-like structure kept her from seeing anything that might be attached to the bottom. She paused. "Hey, Pear! Come and check this out, will you?"

"Hmm?" Pear hurried over, her heels clacking on the wood. "What is it?"

"I don't know." Utami waved her flashlight across the first few rows of seats. "Will you check out the underside of those?"

Pear frowned, pushing the backs of her wrists against her hips. "Why do I have to do it?"

"Because you're four years younger than me." She blew a stray strand of hair out of her face. "C'mon. It's not like I'm just going to slack off while you're looking."

"Okay, okay." Aiming her flashlight to the heavens, Pear scuttled towards the lower part of the stands.

Utami left her to it, ducking around to the outside room. As she cast a look back across the struts, she frowned. They really weren't the same all the way across. Wasn't that strange?

Sweeping the beam of her flashlight over the individual metal strips didn't reveal anything, so she backed up to the wall, letting the weaker light spread out. A shadow was cast on the far wall, but it was too faint and blurred to be of any use. She tried changing the angle of the flashlight, but that only made it worse.

"Well, I'm doing _something_ wrong... Either this doesn't mean anything, or I need something more than a flashlight."

She let it be for the moment and moved on to the other large goal.

"First things first..." She tugged at the blue padding, but it didn't give so easily. "Huh? This one's a bit stiffer..."

She pulled harder, struggling especially with her sandals giving little purchase on the waxed floor, but the padding wouldn't budge.

"Lucky? Could you give me a hand with this? It's not coming off like the other one."

The boy perked up from where he stood waving his flashlight at the ceiling, and he hurried over.

"Urgh..."

Even with their efforts combined, the padding wouldn't give.

"I guess there's nothing hidden under this one," Utami sighed. Backing up, she looked over what parts of the goal she _could_ get to. Nothing seemed strange about the net, but something was off about the glass backboard.

"Something's disturbing the light near the top. I can't see it from down here, though... And how am I supposed to get way up there?"

Frowning, she went to the side of the goal to look for some way to lower it, but she wasn't even sure if it was adjustable.

"Um, Cera?" Lucky had surfaced at her right, gripping one of the smaller sections of the padded support. "I might be able to get up there. Just, if whatever you're doing isn't working..."

Utami stepped back, shining her light on the point of interest. "Go right ahead."

Lucky nodded, setting up his flashlight glass-up beneath the hoop and stepping to the left of the goal. Sucking in a breath, he ran straight for the wall, taking two steps up it before launching himself into a backwards flip that landed him on the section of metal just behind the backboard. He carefully shifted from his landing crouch to a standing position and turned to reach over to where Utami's flashlight shined.

She blinked, lowering her arms once he removed whatever was up there. "Um... What was _that_?"

"What was what?" Lucky frowned, sitting on the neck of the goal and looking over the item in his hand. "I don't know; some kind of glass..."

"No, I mean, what was _that_?!" She motioned to the wall and where Lucky was now sitting.

He smiled a little. "Would you believe, I used to be a gymnast. That's where the flip came from, at least. I still do a little parkour, but... My two best friends and I were going to win all of the Olympics." He sighed. "And then a bad injury took me down before I got too far."

Utami pulled down on the bottom of her hoodie. "Did you hurt your hands?"

"Aah?!" He gripped his right hand. "Yeah..." He let out a breath. "I... screwed up majorly messing around on a pommel horse and broke two bones in my hand, and one in my wrist. But I didn't think it was that bad, and the biggest competition I'd ever had the chance to participate in was about to start after warmups... So I really ended up screwing things up more without seeking treatment immediately. I mean, I can still use my hand all right, but it gives me trouble sometimes. And my parents yanked me out of gymnastics immediately."

He looked down at some spot of the floor that wasn't illuminated. "I guess that was the first of it."

"The first of what?" Utami responded.

He blinked before turning away so he could hop down safely. "Oh, nothing."

"So I take it you've got some nice scars on that hand?" Five approached, his hands in his pockets and his flashlight tucked under his arm.

Taken aback, Lucky folded his hands behind his neck. "Um, yeah."

Five smirked, tilting his head towards Utami. "That's what you thought, right? No reason you would have guessed his hands otherwise."

Utami nodded slowly, her gaze unavoidably drawn to the odd gash crossing Five's face. "How about your own scar, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Oh, it's no big deal." He shrugged. "It wasn't an accident, after all."

"Huh?!" Lucky hopped back, his arms splayed for balance.

"What do you mean, it wasn't from an accident?" Utami leaned towards Five, her free hand fisted.

He lifted his eyebrows, a thin smile on his lips. "If it wasn't an accident, then what does that make it?" He turned around before she could answer. "Now come on. The clock's still ticking."

Utami and Lucky exchanged a look as Five walked away, but neither said a word.

Five's scar... He had done it on purpose? Or... somebody else had?

She shivered, her grip on the flashlight tightening. It was more important to search the room right now. Maybe when they got out she could ask more about it.

She had already given the room a once-over, but she hadn't found the code or more than one screwdriver. Her attention fell to the circle of glass in her hand. It was curved, thinner at the edges but not enough to cut anything.

"Is it a watch glass?" Five looked over her shoulder.

"A... watch?"

Five shook his head. "No, a watch glass. Like... you use it to block off vapor or to crystallize chemicals on."

She turned it in her hands. "Have you found anything like that?"

"No. Maybe it's not a watch glass, huh? 'Swhat it looks like, though." He frowned, crossing his arms.

Utami slid her fingers over the glass once more before holding it directly up in front of her flashlight. The beam scattered into a bright field.

"Hey!" Immediately she stepped back over to the side of the spread-out stands. Staying a bit closer this time, she shined the light through the lens. Crisp shadows hit the back wall.

"N15? Is that what it says?" She made a mental note of the shadow before turning back to the court.

"Cera! Guys!" A thump. "Ow!"

"Pear?" Utami went back to the underbelly of the stands, where the other girl was snaking out from beneath the second-lowest level. Coughing, Pear waved an arm; when Utami aimed her flashlight, a gleam came from a metal shaft.

"There was one on the very bottom row pretending to be one of the supports." She pulled herself a little further before Utami helped her up. "It's square. You're the one holding on to all of them, right?" She tossed it to her.

"Apparently," Utami said as she caught it. The tip was indeed square—it probably fit in the slot Lucky had dubbed "square recess."

"Just two more to go!" Pear piped, rolling her shoulders back. "Let's get at it! We'll be out of here in no time!"

"We've searched most of the room already..." Utami shook her head, as Pear had already fled the bleachers to look elsewhere.

In the meantime, Utami looked over the things she'd gotten from this room. The note from the collapsed bleachers caught her attention.

"Thirty degrees from corner... Is it how I'm supposed to shine the light? But I was able to find the code in the stands by pointing the flashlight at it head-on. Something else, then...?"

She stepped out to the heart of the room before remembering the glass object. It had a corner.

"Let's see." She positioned herself to shine the light towards the blank, white wall, turning the glass prism in her hands. "Thirty degrees from the corner... I'm not sure which direction, but I can try both."

Going to the left shifted the shadows on the wall, but they remained formless voids cast from confetti. She carefully turned the glass the other way, about sixty degrees total. A little shifting, and a large "7" appeared in the shadows, a smaller "ROW" and "LEFT" above and beneath it.

"Row 7, left..."

"What is it?" Lucky had come up next to her to squint at the shadows.

"I've found two messages, and we're missing two screwdrivers."

Pear joined the group, spinning her flashlight in her hand. "What have we got, then?"

"One is 'row 7 left,' and the other is 'N15.' "

"N15?" came a voice from above them. Utami took her gaze off the prism's shadow to check out the top of the stands. Five was a few rows up, leaning over the railing on their side.

"Yeah. Does that mean anything to you?"

Five nodded, his curls bouncing. "The seats have numbers and letters. I'll jump up to N15 now."

"So that's that one. What's 'row 7, left'? There aren't any rows that aren't the bleachers, right?"

Utami turned her flashlight back onto the prism, but the message was the same. "It could be the other bleachers."

Lucky frowned, rubbing one of his sideburns. "Do we have to figure out how to un-collapse them? That's a pain..."

"Well, let's get over there and see," Utami decided, putting away the prism and striding to the other side of the gym.

Lucky made it over there first, shining his flashlight on the left edge of the stands. "One, two..." He moved his free hand up from the bottom until he made it to the gap above the seventh row.

Utami aimed her flashlight around his hand until she got a reflection.

"It's way back there!" Pear exclaimed. "How is Lucky supposed to stick his hand in that far?"

Lucky reached regardless, but he couldn't get any more than his wrist between the stands. "Maybe we really do have to spread it out."

Utami frowned, backing up. Her arms may have been slimmer than Lucky's, but that wouldn't make a difference if she couldn't get her wrist through. And to be honest, she didn't really want to go around shoving her hand in dark crevices.

Instead, she turned around. "Five? How's it going up there?"

"I'm at N15, but I'm not seeing the screwdriver."

Utami's brow furrowed, and she hurried over, her footfalls on the steps clanging and vibrating the whole bleacher. Five took a step back as she approached, aiming her flashlight at the red plastic where he pointed. Indeed, a little "N15" bulged from the plastic on the front side. Since it was a bench, it was a bit odd to have seat numbers, but they looked manufactured, and all of the bars of plastic were cut into seat-sized sections.

"Let me see..." She ran her hand across the rough surface before sweeping light over each wooden side. Finding nothing, she felt around the edges.

"Ah?" She gripped the bottom curve of the plastic where she felt something like little tabs. Pushing them in, she lifted. The seat came off with a click, and she staggered back to set it down on N14. Five eagerly shined a light on the exposed surface but had to heave a sigh.

Utami only had to glance to know why. "Still no screwdriver. But what _is_ this?" She felt over the wooden squares in a 3x3 grid, sans one square. She couldn't pick them up, but she could slide them.

"You've got to be kidding me." Five sat down, still pointing his flashlight at the wood. "A slide puzzle?"

"Hmm." Utami turned around, kneeling on the row below the puzzle. "I just have to push these around until everything's in the right place, right?"

"If it's a normal puzzle. There's not much of a picture on it, but I guess you can tell where the wood grain matches up."

"All right. Let me give it a shot." Utami leaned over the puzzle, sliding the boxes one at a time and hoping she wouldn't lodge any splinters in her fingers for the effort. Thanks to the relatively small size of the puzzle, she was able to align the wood grains in just under a minute, leaving a gap in the middle.

The grid immediately clicked, the squares popping up like they had been spring-loaded. Utami ducked out of the way initially but looked again. The grid itself was what had become dislodged; she was able to dig her fingernails under one edge and pull it free.

Finally, a slotted screwdriver sat in the square recess below.

"Yes!" Utami snatched it up, running her fingers over it as if to make sure it was real.

Five got to his feet. "Good job. Hey, Lucky, Pear! How are things going over..." He cut off, blinking, and Utami followed his gaze.

Lucky and Pear were no longer standing in front of the other set of bleachers.

"Over here!" Pear's voice came from the right—the other large goal. "I thought something about the hoop seemed funny, so Lucky's checking it out."

Utami hurried down the stairs and over to the goal, where Lucky tangled his fingers in the net, his ankles crossed above the neck of the support.

"What's so weird about it?" Even though Lucky had his flashlight aimed at the net, Utami added her own light to the mix.

"It's kinda thin and flat," Lucky said, wobbling a bit where he half-hung, "but mostly the orange paint is kind of cheap and wearing off. Right, Pear?"

The girl with the [2] bracelet nodded. "That's what I thought, anyway. What do you think? Can you get it off?"

"It's screwed on," he called back. "Um—" he waved at Utami with one arm before shaking his head—"Cera. You have the Philips, right?"

She nodded. "The cross one?" Pulling it out, she got on her tiptoes and stretched her arm towards the suspended boy.

"Yeah." He had to let go of the net altogether to come down and reach the screwdriver, but he pulled himself back up with the bottom of the backboard. Letting out a breath, he gripped the screwdriver in his left hand and reached for one side of the hoop, then the other. The orange ring came clattering down moments later.

"So what makes this so special?" Five stooped to pick it up before jumping back. The hoop attacked his metal gauntlet, vibrating as it hung off the edge of it.

Pear's eyes went wide, and she hurried towards him. "It's... a magnet?"

Utami gripped the free side of the hoop and yanked it off Five's armwear. "Feels like it. And I'm pretty sure I know what to do with it."

She went straight to row 7, left and positioned the hoop in the desired slot. She only had to push it halfway in before a dragging sound ended in a clang that sent a wave of motion through it. Upon removal, a screwdriver clung to its edge.

With a laugh of victory, Utami ripped it off, dropping the hoop and hurrying to the front door. It didn't take much concentration to match each screwdriver with its screwhead. With her on one side and Five on the other, four faint _ping_ s hit the ground in no time.

The panel screeched as she pulled it off, revealing two light switched and a small level with a flat handle. Each switch turned on half of the lights in the gym in a checkerboard pattern. The lever turned on the scoreboard with an ear-piercing blare.

"Ay!" Pear's hands flew to her ears, but the buzzer turned off as soon as it had started.

Panting, Utami whipped around to take in the little bulbs of the scoreboard.

HOME: 99

AWAY: 99

QUARTER: 9

TIME: 23:57

Lucky, who had joined them since, blinked. "Nine quarters?"

"I don't think that's the part we should be worried about," Utami said, putting the metal panel down and jogging to the other side of the court. Facing the lock, she pressed [2], [3], [5], [7], and [ENTER]. The numbers immediately disappeared, but a quiet click came from the doorknob. Utami wasted no time in turning it and throwing the door open.

 **YOU FOUND IT**


	13. Door 8 (2)

Author's Note: I'm sorry for the delay, but I was really lacking in motive this past week. I can say that reviews would help... if you do want faster updates, of course.

Additionally, the type of puzzle used in this chapter is from Erich Friedman (2010).

* * *

Thankfully, the next room was already well-lit. But before Utami could count her blessings, chiming came over the speakers.

 _Ding dong ding dong... Ding dong ding dong... Ding dong ding dong... Ding dong ding dong._

 _Dong... Dong... Dong... Dong... Dong._

The last ring echoed in Utami's ears as she took a deep breath.

"It's been five hours, huh?" Lucky scratched his chest, looking at the ground.

"Just over halfway through the time we were given." Five's fingers shifted in his pockets. "We've been making progress, at least..."

Pear pumped her fist into the air. "Well, no need to stop now! Let's see what we've got here!" She ran off to the center of the new room as Lucky shook his head.

"I'm not saying she doesn't have a point, but..."

Five smirked. "What, her voice drives you crazy, too?"

"Uh, no, not really... She just has a lot of energy. Isn't she older than me?"

"She's seventeen," Utami offered.

"One year, then." Lucky frowned, gripping his hands.

"And I'm 23. Can we check out the room now?" Five deadpanned.

Lucky cringed. "Right, right. Sorry."

Utami waved it off. "It's fine. Let's get started."

Partly responsible for the bright lighting of the room were two walls covered with panels of mirrors. The only interruption was a bar that continued across the corner from one wall to the other. The floor of that section was made of wooden planks, or some imitation thereof, that sloped down onto the grey cement of the rest of the room. Rolled-up somethings of every color stuck out of a series of open boxes opposite the wooden area. An open doorway on the right led to a small room with a television, boxes of videotapes, and a locked white door. Left of the main room was a large room with the same rough floor, a few dotted lines of duct tape forming a loose grid. At the front, on the same wall as the doorway, was a low table with two laptop computers. Some jump ropes hung on a hook in the wall just next to a metal emergency door that wouldn't open.

Utami let out a slow breath. Mirrored area—boxes—video room—laptops—emergency door.

 **SEEK A WAY OUT!**

Lucky was taking up the mirrored area at the moment, so she started with the boxes.

"What the heck are these things?" She picked out a blue roll-up and gripped one edge, letting the rest flop out onto the floor. It was about the size of a towel, but much smoother and a bit more cushy.

"Yoga mats, huh?" Pear removed a purple one from the box and laid it out. Squatting down, she pushed her palms onto the surface. "Pretty nice."

Utami blinked. "You do yoga? I didn't peg you as the type that would want to stand still for that long."

Pear stuck her tongue out. "Come on, I'm an adult. I can handle it." She blew her bangs out of her face with a pout. "And... yeah, it's actually my mom that does yoga. But whatever."

With Pear's help, Utami rolled out all of the mats, which filled up the concrete space by the dance floor quite nicely.

"How about that? Twelve instead of nine."

Pear smiled. "There are nine different colors, though."

"Are you serious?" Utami looked back over the mats to confirm that there were only three pairs of the same colors. "Rats. We were _that_ close."

As her gaze swept over the yoga mats, she paused. Something small appeared to have fallen out while they were setting up all of the boxes' contents. She picked it up.

"It's a normal-looking key. It probably opens a door rather than a drawer."

Keeping it in her grasp, she returned to the boxes to see if she had missed anything else.

"Looks like there's a piece of paper in here." She stooped to pick it up. "Some kind of... [order form]?"

"2x Y

1x GY

1x RED

1x GOLD

2x GREEN

1x INDIGO

1x FUCHSIA

2x LAVENDER

1x TURQUOISE"

Utami folded it in half. "There are two of the yellow, green, and purple mats. Looks about right. What's the point of this, though?"

She shifted it to her left hand for safekeeping and moved on to the wooden part of the floor.

"These planks are really smooth... Are they even real wood?"

She moved on to the mirrors, but they reflected her image so perfectly nothing seemed to be amiss with them. Of course, that didn't mean nothing was amiss with _her_.

"...Ouch."

Although her framing braids were in place, the rest of her hair was a wild mess, not well tampered by the white bows on either side. Whatever makeup she'd had on before the knockout gas came was nowhere to be seen, and the bags under her eyes made it look like it was finals week.

"Ugh." The sooner she was back home, preferably in bed, the better.

She turned to the handrails. They were round, fake wood-looking with dull silver endcaps.

"Do these come off?" She gripped the one closest to the yoga mats and tugged. With a _pop_ , the silver part pulled away from the rest. Utami gave a laugh of victory before peering in. Her face blocked most of the light, but she was still able to see... _something_ in the hollow interior about halfway through.

"There's no way I can reach in there. I can't take it off of the wall to tilt it, either..."

She stepped back with a sigh, scanning the dance floor again. "That's it. Kind of disappointing."

After a bit of deliberation, she walked towards the room with the computers and emergency door. She went for the door first.

"No keyhole. I guess I wouldn't expect to find one on a door like this. And..." She leaned against the center bar despite the warning that alarms would sound. "...it, of course, won't open. I don't see an obvious lock on it, so it might be controlled wirelessly or something."

"Are you sure it's supposed to open for us at all?" Lucky stretched his arms behind his neck. "I don't think it ought to be easy to lock up an emergency door."

Utami frowned, squinting at the door handle. "I'm pretty sure we've been able to go through all of the doors we've actually seen. All the others have been completely bolted up."

"Ah." Lucky grimaced. "I guess you're right."

Grinning, she reached to pat him on the shoulder. "Don't worry; we'll figure this out."

He gave her a believing nod as she stepped towards the jump ropes. "None of these are very stiff... I don't see any use for them right now other than heart health."

She crossed to the laptops and hit the Enter key of each one, then the power key.

"No response. Maybe the batteries are dead?"

She stepped around to see the backs of the laptops, but they were both plugged in to a normal-looking outlet. "I don't get it. They really look like they ought to be working."

"Maybe a fuse is out or something?" Lucky offered. "The light is on, so I wouldn't think so, but... It could be set up funny."

"So I should look for a fuse box?" She ducked under the table, but she only saw the outlet. "If there is one, it's not in here. But there is something..."

She reached for the thin object and picked it up. "It's a small [needle]. Have to make sure not to stab myself with it."

She glanced over the tape—no obvious meaning—before crossing to the other side room. The television drew her attention first.

"It's like the one behind [Door 2]... No remote, though." She tried the power button.

The screen flickered to life, a yellow blur of a single word appearing on a blue background.

"YOU."

"As in you-you or us-you?" Five said from behind her.

Utami took a step back to be even with him. "No idea. Do you think the screen is supposed to be that fuzzy?"

He shrugged, staring at the screen. After a moment, he turned to face her. "Hey, uh..." His eyes darted to her bracelet. "Tri..."

"Cera."

"Cera." He nodded, averting his gaze. "I'm bad with names. Anyway, this is kind of a weird question... But I thought I heard you mention it back behind [Door 6]. Something called a [morphogenetic field]?"

Utami's mouth went dry. [Morphogenetic field]... To her, those words were worse than the chiming of the school clock. Rather than telling her how much time had passed, it was a reminder of the times that would never grow distant enough.

 _"It would be very much to your advantage to access the morphogenetic field, as this test has been conducted before... If, of course, you were capable of it."_

The voice of that man echoed in her head enough she didn't even realize when Five was speaking again.

"...Cera? It was Cera, right?"

She nodded dumbly.

Five blinked back at her, rubbing the side of his chin. "I was just going to ask you about that stuff... It's kind of a weird subject, but I love conspiracies and pseudoscience, y'know? I didn't think I'd hear anyone else refer to something so obscure."

"Mm." Utami pulled her hood up over her head as if hiding under a blanket. "I wouldn't have known about it if it weren't for... some things that happened. Against my will."

Five frowned and folded his arms loosely. "What, your brother dragged you into it?" He glanced at the ceiling, not waiting for an answer. "I was just thinking about that kind of stuff... Do you think it's true that only certain people are any good at using the morphogenetic field?"

"Of course," she murmured. "If everyone was good, it would be a lot easier to prove it exists, if it really does." Not to mention she had done her best to access information that was supposedly drifting all around her seven years ago, only to come up utterly empty-handed.

"But what about the people who are good at it?" Five turned to the ceiling again, some of his curls sliding back from his forehead. "Can they interact with people who aren't through it? How hard would it be?"

"I don't know." Utami shuffled her feet, her gaze falling just below the television screen. "Harder than contacting a good receiver, I guess."

Five's face scrunched up a little in thought. "I mean, it's a field, right? Just like a magnetic field? So... let's say this. The good senders are north poles, and the good receivers are south poles. So a message can get from one to the other pretty well, right?"

"Okay..."

"But what happens when you put a magnet by a neutral object?"

"Um, well... It sort of temporarily aligns the magnetic fields of the atoms in that object so they'll be attracted. If you bring in the north pole, then the object will act like a south pole... At least on the side that the real magnet is."

Five nodded, a light of enthusiasm in his eyes. "So you end up with the same kind of interaction that a normal north and south pole would have, right? Even though the neutral object wasn't really a magnet and won't be when the real magnet leaves?"

"Yes?" Utami wasn't quite sure where he was going with this, but at least he wasn't asking her about [morphogenetic fields] anymore.

"[Electromagnetic induction]," he said. "That's what that phenomenon is called—the same thing happens with positive and negative charges, or the electric field. So tell me this. The morphogenetic field is supposed to be something like that, that just exists and connects things with results, right? Then don't you think that, if a strong user of the field is present, induction could still occur?"

"You mean..." Utami grasped her hands. "Someone that can't normally access the field could be able to send or receive something just because a strong receiver or sender is nearby?"

He smacked his hands together with a grin. "Exactly."

Utami mulled it over. Weren't the originals in Building Q supposed to be great receivers? Why, then, couldn't anyone in her group receive any of their information? Had it just been too long?

There wasn't a good way to find out, not without holding a whole new set of experiments. She'd had enough of that already—and this [Nonary Game] wasn't even about the morphogenetic field. Not if they were the only ones being tested. What was the point?

"So... what does that mean for us?" she asked.

"Huh? I don't know." Five scratched his head. "Like I said, I'm just interested in this stuff. Usually I don't get to talk to people about it, so..."

"I see." Utami let out a breath, pulling her hood back down. "If that's the case, can we get back to the investigation now?"

Five grimaced. "Sure thing. Sorry."

Utami had to take a minute to distance herself from the conversation before she could concentrate on searching the room. The [morphogenetic field]... There was no reason to think about it anymore. It was much more important to get out of this room, and out of this building. No amount of pseudoscience would help her with that.

She rifled through the stacks of video tapes. Even ignoring how obsolete they were, the fact that the monitor had no VCR player made them even more useless. "Surely there's something in this pile..."

She dug through yoga tapes, exercise ball tapes, and other workout tapes until she reached an empty sleeve of thin cardboard. Well, empty of any videos.

"It's a small pair of [pliers]. The head's pretty thick, so it's probably better for bending stuff than pinching it."

"They're slip-joint pliers," Lucky offered. "You can change the joint to deal with thinner or thicker stuff."

Utami held it up to the light. "Would it be any good for ripping the dance bars off the wall?"

"Uh..." He blinked. "German would be more useful for that than any gripping tools... It's all welded, so there's not much we can do for those. Why? Do you just hate dance studios?"

She nodded with all seriousness. "I want to deface it because my parents forced me to take ballet as a child. I'm going to break all of the mirrors, too. Think these pliers will be any good for that?"

Facial features spread wide in astonishment, Lucky leaned away from her. "I mean, it's solid, but... you'll hurt yourself. I guess... you could hold up a yoga mat for cover?"

Finally, Utami giggled, lowering the pliers. "I'm not going to mess up the dance studio, Lucky."

"Then... Then what was that conversation just now all about?!"

"Messing with you, mostly."

Maintaining her grip on the pliers, she moved on to the only other noticeable feature of the room: the door.

"And it's locked. Naturally." After a bit of shuffling, she retrieved the [door key] and tried it out.

"Click. I'm in." Leaving the key in its hole, she turned the doorknob and opened up the closet. "There's not much space... It must have been used for spare clothes or something instead of equipment."

The row of balloons at eye level drew her attention first. "Nine of them: red, yellow, purple, pink, gold, grey, blue-green, green, and purplish blue."

"Hey, they all have helium!" Pear clapped her hands together, a grin on her face. "It's less dense than air, which is why they float. And helium is the second element on the Periodic Table." She tilted her chin up. "Not bad, huh? I bet your brother would be proud of me."

"I'm pretty sure anyone who's seen a Periodic Table knows that much..."

Pear huffed, thrusting her fists down. "Well, I bet you don't know what the balloons are made of!"

Utami frowned. "Rubber?"

"I mean the chemical formula!"

"...Do _you_ know what the chemical formula is?"

She looked to the side, mouth scrunched to the right. "No..."

Rolling her eyes, Utami took a closer look at the balloons. Nothing seemed to be special about them, but they were all tied to a table-like mechanism, each string attached to a different little black REDACTED. "These probably respond to the balloons somehow..."

She turned her gaze up, where a bar crossed near the top of the closet. A single [wire hanger] dangled from it.

"Well, no reason to leave it there."

Pear grinned. "Are we all doing s'mores when we get out?"

Utami waved the hanger at her. "Does this look like chocolate to you?"

"Of course not! But that's how you roast the marshmallows, right? Straighten up the hanger and stab the little sugar puffs on them?"

"Only you would say 'little sugar puffs'..."

At any rate, Pear had given her an idea. Taking out the [pliers], she gripped on to the spiral-bent end of the hanger and started twisting. With a little effort, she transformed it into a mostly straight [stiff wire] about the length of her arm.

"And speaking of stabbing..." She turned back to the balloons. "That's the only thing I can think to do with these."

"Well, give me something sharp and I'll get on it," Five responded.

Utami frowned at him. "You don't really think it's that easy, do you?"

He paused before sighing. "I guess not. We can probably only do certain ones... And it looks like we're not getting any second chances if we're wrong."

"Well, there are nine of them." Pear prodded at her cheek, frowning in thought. "Which there's nine of everything, but... Maybe it has something to do with the nine yoga mat types? That was at least in this room."

Utami nodded, consulting the list of colors. "These match the colors of the balloons."

Now that she looked at it again, the list seemed rather odd... "Why are there only abbreviations for yellow and grey?"

"They're not even the same number of letters..." Lucky adjusted his gloves, looking to the side. "You'd think they'd all be a two-letter or three-letter code if they were going to abbreviate them at all."

They weren't the same number of letters...

Utami scanned the list and the balloons again before lowering the piece of paper. "I think I've figured out what the colors mean. The only question is, which ones do we need to pop?" She retrieved the [needle] as she spoke.

"The only hint in the room is 'YOU,' " Five said. "So... us?"

Lucky frowned, scratching his cheek. "I guess my predominant color is green..."

"Or... Hang on." Utami thought for a moment. "But how would it know... Ah!"

She remembered the code for the last room that had appeared on the scoreboard. It had been the numbers of everyone who had registered on the RED. If that part of [Door 8] knew who they were, why wouldn't this one?

She looked over the list of colors once more, counting the letters in each, before stepping up to the balloons, needle in hand. In one breath, she popped the grey—[2]—the red—[3]—the green—[5]—and the fuchsia—[7].

The knobs beneath the deflated balloons sunk down, and an electrical hum came from somewhere far behind her.

"You got it!" Lucky cried. "I'm not sure what 'it' is, but... Good job, Cera."

Ready to investigate, Utami put the needle down and took a look behind her. The television had turned off, but nothing else about it seemed to have changed. Stepping through the doorway into the main room, she paused. Nothing digital was in there _to_ have changed, but the bars on the mirrors drew her back.

"There was something in here I couldn't reach..." She looked in again, confirming the whatever-it-was was still there. She still couldn't get her whole hand in, but that probably wasn't the best approach, anyway.

She looked through her things before pulling out the [straight wire]. "If I just slide it in at the top, lower the edge, and pull it back in..."

She carefully maneuvered the unbent hanger into the hollow tube and dragged it back out, a folded piece of paper dropping to the floor as she did so.

"All right! This is..." She unfolded the index card-sized paper. On the top, it read, "1- -35"; at the very bottom, it said, "369- -."

"I... have no idea what that means." Five rubbed his forehead. "We already popped the balloons... What other numbers are there?"

Utami shook her head, glancing over the room before passing through the other doorway.

"Hey!" Lucky called, right beside her. "The computers are on now!"

"Yeah?" Utami hurried to crouch in front of them.

The laptop on the right had a five-by-five grid on it, partially filled with numbers:

\- - -3- -  
\- -3- - -  
2- - - -  
\- - - -9  
-6- - -

A blinking cursor was in the first blank square, and she couldn't manipulate it except by entering a digit, which then appeared, moving the cursor to the next blank square. She hastily pressed backspace and was able to delete it. The arrow keys also moved the cursor, but without changing the content of the boxes.

The other screen was a plain white, a short paragraph in typewriter face that wouldn't change no matter what she tried.

"Put [3] digits in each row and each column. Each row and column must contain numbers in increasing order from top to bottom and left to right. The difference between consecutive digits in any single row or column must be the same."

"Oh, good, a math puzzle," Lucky sighed, resting the back of his head on his crossed hands. "I'll leave this to you, Cera..."

"All right. I got it."

Setting the [index card note] down on the tabletop, Utami got on her knees and looked over the number grid.

"This note must correspond to the first and last rows of the puzzle. So..."

1- -3 -5  
\- -3- - -  
2- - - -  
\- - - -9  
3 6 9- -

"That means the difference between numbers in the first row is [2], in the last row is [3], and in the first column is [1]. I get it. Let's see what I can do..."

After a bit of trial and error, she managed to fill it out.

1- -3 -5  
\- -3 5 7  
2 4 6- - -  
\- 5 - 7 9  
3 6 9- -

With a high-pitched beep, the displays of both laptops turned bright green.

"Great!" The tenseness that had knit Lucky's shoulders faded. "That's gotta be our way out of here."

"All right, let's go!" Pear chimed. She backpedaled to help Utami up. "Actually, Cera..."

Pear held out a key. "This fell out from underneath the balloon thing."

"Oh, good. Mind if I take it?"

She shrugged. "I have, like, no good pockets in this thing. Go ahead."

With a nod of thanks, Utami took the [蟠龍] and tucked it safely away in a pocket of her cargo shorts.

Five was already at the emergency door, his hands poised on the bar. He looked over his shoulder. "Ready to see what happens?"

No one seemed unprepared, so he pushed, the bar giving a satisfying _clack_ before the door swung open with a low creak.

 **YOU FOUND IT**


	14. Up and Down the Stairs

The door led straight to the staircase. Apparently, in the dim light, no one had been able to tell a handle-less door from a bolted-down window earlier.

Utami reached for one of her pockets, but Lucky quickly found that the [黃龍] digital lock was still open. Swinging the door, he paused. "So where do we think the others are going to be?"

"At the other side of [Door 1]." Utami stepped past the threshold into the lit room.

Pear rested a finger against her cheek. "Do you think it led to another stairwell?"

Five, the farthest back, put his hands in his jean pockets. "There's no way to know. I don't exactly have my phone or any of their numbers." He smirked. "Well, their ten-digit numbers."

Unfortunately, Utami didn't have a supernatural connection to her brother, either. "Well, [Door 1] was on the third floor, right? So that's probably our best bet."

"But we're on the same floor now, aren't we?" Pear brought up.

Lucky nodded. "They're obviously not right here, though..."

"And they may have run off to try a new key or keycard somewhere." Five pushed his glasses up. "Our best bet is probably to split up."

Pear responded with an exasperated sigh. "But then we won't know where _anyone_ is!"

"Then we just agree to meet back here after a while," Utami said. "Ten minutes?"

Lucky wrung his hands. "But what if we don't find them by then?"

"Then we start all over again." Utami looked at the stairs. "I'm going to look around for this [蟠龍 keycard]'s match."

The others nodded in approval and stated a few of their destinations. Pear would see if she could get around to the normal stairwell and the rest of the third floor. Lucky would check the basement, and Five would start on the second floor.

Utami's best bet for the [蟠龍] lock would be the office-like doors on the first and second floors. The first floor was locked in this stairwell—but by what? She'd never gotten a good look at it.

She hurried down the stairs to investigate. No card reader was mounted on the side, but she didn't see a keyhole, either.

"What's supposed to unlock it, then? Or is it ever supposed to unlock?"

Experimentally, she pressed on the handle and was completely unprepared when it fell away from her hands.

"Gah!" She tumbled forward, not quite managing to catch herself before she fell onto the carpet of the next room. "Ow..."

She pulled herself to her feet, rubbing a faintly scraped patch above her knee.

"What the heck? They did say this had been locked, right?" With a frown, she let the door creak closed behind her.

Ahead was a cramped hallway, its walls a spotted but sterile shade of white. She couldn't make out any doors, so the only option was forging ahead and following the corner. Finally it ran into a one-panel metal door spreading from side to side.

"This thing'd better open."

Utami seized the handle and turned. It turned with her.

"Whew."

She stepped through before straightening her wrist and jamming her foot in the doorway. She wasn't willing to take off and leave one of her clean, white sandals in the crack, so she glanced around to see if anything within reach would do. She soon found the little box affixed to the right side of the door. One of the keycard scanners, its light green.

"Hmm... Well..." She looked between the scanner and her foot a few times before letting the door close. It shut with a final-sounding _thud._

"Oh, boy." She reached for the handle and pulled—

It opened just as easily as it had from the inside.

With a sigh of relief, she let it fall closed again. "Well, isn't that nice of The Malefactor. Although with a name like that, pretty much anything normal would seem nice of him."

She cast one more glance at the keycard—its label was [虯龍]. A... bug dragon?

"Hey! Cera!"

Utami recognized the voice before she turned to see one of the others jogging towards her.

"Solo!" She glanced around him, but the others weren't with him. "Are you holding up all right?"

"Hm." He nodded, coming to a panting stop a few feet ahead of her.

"I guess you got through [Door 1]? Is that where the [虯龍]—" she traced the kanji in the air—"keycard was?"

He nodded again. "You found the lock here, then?"

"Yeah." Utami motioned to the door behind her and glanced at the open area ahead. A bathroom on either side—the brick walls curled to prevent the need for doors—and a blocked-off area opposite a plain door. "Where's everyone else?"

"Don't know." Solo cast a look over his shoulder. "Bathrooms must be in the same place on every floor. I stopped at the one just outside the door and told them I'd catch up. I guess they're out looking for you all."

"Well, they must have come this far." She swung the door open and peered down the hallway, although with the turn she couldn't see the stairwell door. "You'd think we would have run into them on the stairs, though... Did you guys finish a while ago, then?"

Solo scratched the triangle of fuzz on his chin. "Not 'a while,' but... Five to ten minutes, probably?" Looking ready to make a joke, he lifted his left but but sighed.

I looked past the stump. "No watch, right?"

He nodded, lowering his arm.

Letting out a breath, Utami shut the door behind her. "I guess we just missed them. My group is meeting back up in ten minutes. I'm trying to find where this keycard goes in the meantime." She dug the [蟠龍 keycard] out of her pocket and showed it to Solo. "Look familiar?"

He scanned the word before giving a single nod. "Coiled Dragon. I'm sure I saw it on one of the doors... Around the desks in the atrium, right?"

"Sounds good. How do we get there from here?"

Solo nodded before heading towards the other door. "Let's see if I can work us around."

He led her up the stairs at a rather slow pace, but he insisted he was fine. After a little bit of going up and down and getting through another thick door, they finally made it to one of the outside stairwells and climbed down to the first floor. Solo led her to the single door at the end of the row of desks.

"Let's see..." Utami wiped a little dust off the nameplate over the card scanner.

蟠龍

"That's the one, right?" Solo was leaning, the small of his back pressed against the counter behind them.

"It had better be." Utami lined up her keycard and slid it through its slot. The red light on the scanner blinked off, the green above it turning on in its stead.

"We're in." She seized the doorknob and twisted it. For once, the wooden door didn't creak as it opened. The room beyond was dark, but a little feeling around found a set of light switches just beside the door frame.

"Let there be light," Utami said as she flicked them on. A few round overhead bulbs came to life as well as a large lamp with a dull, square lampshade.

Solo stepped inside behind her. "I'm gonna say office."

Utami nodded as she scanned the room—she could only come to the same conclusion. To the right was a dark wooden desk covered with papers, paperweights, file folders, paper clips, pens, and other clutter. Behind it was a worn but nice leather chair, pushed back against a blinded window to the atrium area. Several less comfortable-looking chairs were spread in a choppy arc not far from the front of the desk. Various certificates and other framed things hung on every wall, all of them straight. Two other doors were present: a wooden one on the far wall with a little glass window, and a metal one on the right.

Utami stepped up to the metal door immediately, her throat tightening. [3] stretched across the length of the metal, a bit of the red splatter reaching the off-white walls.

"[Door 3], huh? About a third of what I wanted, but better than nothing." Solo slipped past her to examine the RED. It said [VACANT], just like any other new one they'd found.

"Yeah... We probably won't be able to find [Door 9] until we've cleared all of the other [numbered doors]." Utami sighed, fiddling with one of her braids.

Solo's brow furrowed. "You think so, huh? I hope we have time for that..."

"Wouldn't be much of a 'game' otherwise." Utami crossed her arms, frowning at the painted number for a while longer before turning to the other closed door. It had a curved handle rather than a knob, and a keyhole took up the front of the handle joint.

"Doesn't feel like much of a game to me." Solo tugged his left sleeve up a little. "What kind of ship is this Malefactor running?"

"Ship? They're not even pretending it's a ship this time," Utami said as she jiggled the handle. Locked. She had to glance behind her to see the look Solo was giving her. "As far as what they want... It's probably an experiment. It fails every ethics board and whatever variables they care about aren't too isolated, but I don't know what else would call for an elaborate setup like this."

"An experiment, huh...?" Solo ran his hand through his hair. "Makes as much sense as anything."

Utami nodded but didn't give any other response. There wasn't much more she wanted to say, after all. For a science major, she'd had more than enough experiments...

Instead of pursuing the subject, she got on her tiptoes to check the little window on the locked door. A few good thumps of the heel of her palm only made the glass vibrate.

"We're probably not breaking this."

Solo peered around her. "Might not do any good, anyway. It'd be awful hard to reach around and actually turn the knob from the inside. I don't think I could do it, and I've got the longest arms." He paused.

Utami didn't feel up to commenting that only one of his arms was still long, so she focused on the window instead. The lights were on in the room beyond, and straight ahead she could see the shine of metal—stark in comparison to the blinding red up next to it. A few steps back, and she could see it more clearly. It was definitely a [numbered door]...

"Wait... What?"

Solo stepped a little closer at her cry of confusion. "What is it? Another door?" He squinted at the little window and frowned. "Huh..."

"Well, that's... new," Utami managed as she put her weight on her heels again.

Her Nonary Game certainly hadn't a [Door 0].

"Do you... still think we'll have to go through all of the numbers?" Solo started, his breathing faint. "Because that's impossible."

Impossible?

Utami looked back at the elongated, red [0] on the door, a savage slash cutting from the upper right to the lower left. A digital root of zero... He was right. Even if something added to a multiple of ten, the first digit would be the root, not zero. Unless they could produce a few [0] bracelets, there was no way to get the right root for that door. But that didn't seem right.

"Then why is it here...?"

Why would The Malefactor go to the trouble of setting up a [numbered door] that couldn't be opened? It didn't add up. This [Door 0] couldn't be exactly what it seemed.

Utami gripped the handle again, although it still didn't budge for her. The keyhole, though... It was a little larger than a normal one, and the shape... She felt she had seen it before...

"Solo? Do you recognize the keyhole?"

He frowned and stooped over to check. "That's kind of a weird thing to recognize, you know?" He wiped some sweat off his forehead. "I only remember keys from the rooms, though. As far as the dragons... Didn't Pear have the Hidden Treasure Dragon key?"

"The... The what?" Before she had time to deduce which key he meant, Solo took a paper and pen from the table clutter. He had to commission a few paperweights to keep the sheet from sliding while he wrote down [伏藏龍].

Utami nodded. "The three-symbol one... I guess we'll just have to ask Pear—Oh!" She jerked, her hands flying to her sides. "Pear! I have to meet up with Pear and the rest of them—how long has it been?"

She checked her wrist, but she seriously doubted it was 3:00. "Shoot. Come on, let's go back to the front of [Room 8]. Or..." Frowning, she looked over Solo. "You can stay here and rest if you want. You didn't agree to meet with them, after all. And... it's the back of [Room 6], too..."

Solo shut his eyes for a moment before stepping over and pulling out the leather office chair. "All right. Send one of the guys to bring me some w—beer or something if you find any."

"I don't think we're going to find beer in a school environment... But I'll have Give run you some juice or coffee if we're so lucky."

"Thanks, Cera." Solo leaned in the chair, his neck bent back a little awkwardly without a sufficient headrest to support it. He closed his eyes as Utami hurried out.

Thankfully she had memorized the convoluted path back to the [虯龍] door. The last stairwell door opened with a creak as she hurried inside. No other footsteps clanged above or below.

"I'm definitely late. Crap."

She pelted up as quickly as she could without risking a loss of footing and crashed through the door on the third floor.

"I'm here! Everything's okay! I'm okay! I just got carried away..."

Utami came to a panting stop a while before she could run straight into Lucky and Five. She swung her head around a bit before swallowing.

"Where... Where's Pear?"

Lucky gripped his hands. "I was hoping you'd know..."

Frowning, Utami looked to Five, but he just shook his head. "How late am I?"

"It's not like any of us have clocks on us." Five sighed, shuffling a hand through his brown curls. "But I think it's been fifteen to twenty minutes..."

"What could be taking her so long?" Utami looked over her shoulder. "Was she scouring the sandbox again or what?"

Lucky let out a breath and adjusted his gloves. "We should probably look for her... What do you think?"

"Sure, sounds good to me," Five said. "I can go grab the rest of the guys from the break room and rally them."

"It's been a while," Lucky mumbled. "I guess I could check the basement again..."

Utami nodded. "That won't take long. I'll tag along with you, Lucky."

"Okay, sure."

Their paths decided, the three of them entered the stairwell and split on the second floor, with Utami and Lucky continuing to descend.

"So where was everyone else?" Utami panted.

"They had split up, too, but Five found Zirconium on the second floor just outside of here. Right now they're all supposed to be in the room with the foosball table and stuff. Well, Solo was supposed to catch up." Some of the redness in his face from the exercise faded. "You don't think... I-I mean, his wound was pretty bad..."

Utami shook her head and grinned. "I ran into him, actually. He's cooling down in an office I unlocked, across from the number [3] door."

"Oh." Flushing again, Lucky let out a weak laugh. "Okay. Just me being paranoid, I guess..."

He trailed off as he came to the first-floor landing.

"Lucky? Something wrong?"

He turned to her, stopping. "Did Solo come through here...?"

"No, he never got the chance. Why?"

Lucky's back stiffened as he seized the back of his arm. "I... smell blood. Don't you?"

Blood...? Utami had been panting too hard to worry about smelling anything, but she struggled to catch her breath. Lucky's hands were shaking by the time she finally pulled a reasonable amount of air through her nostrils.

"I... Yeah, a little bit." She sucked in a breath and let it out. It may not have been anything serious. There were two other females here, after all... It was probably...

"C-come on." Her voice was blunt as she swept past Lucky, her grip on the handrail tight. As she descended, the scent grew stronger— _Falcon...?_ —and she had more and more trouble catching her breath. She could hear Lucky's footfalls not far behind her until she rounded the half landing to face the last section of the stairs. Then it all seemed to fade away.

Pear lay at the bottom of the stairs, a puddle of blood around her head and neck that soaked into her shirt and crept over the thinner sections of her spread-out ponytail. Her back was arched a bit, just from the angle between the stairs and the ground, and her legs were twisted uncomfortably, splayed out so they just reached the fourth step. Her arms had fallen at her sides, the fingers bent awkwardly and failing to conceal the [bracelet] that had fallen just beyond them. Her eyes were closed, her face turned sideways and chin tucked in at far too severe an angle for a living person.

But she... wasn't a living person...

Utami hardly noticed her balance shifting until she was already collapsing backwards. She hit something softer than the wall, but it hardly mattered.

Pear was dead... Lying in a puddle of her own blood...

No, not Pear. Momo. She was a real person, not just an experimental subject... And she was... She was...

Only after a few minutes did the numbness of Utami's ears fade enough for her to realize she was screaming. Managing to cut off with a series of coughs and splutters, she gasped for breath, feeling the tears on either side of her face. Lucky was apparently helping to hold her up, his jaw locked in breathless silence.

"Utami... Utami."

She heard her name, but it didn't make sense. Lucky didn't know her name. It made no sense. None of it... Any of it... Momo knew her name... But that didn't make sense, either...

Something shifted, Lucky's support behind her disappearing as she tilted forward into someone's chest. The fabric was rough, and the smell... wasn't blood...

"I... chi..." Her throat was too raw for her to finish her brother's name as she wrapped her arms around him. Her tears soaked into his shirt, but that didn't keep more from coming.

Zirconium didn't say anything. Some other words were being thrown around by other people, but none of them were coherent. She heard Pear's name a few times. She couldn't figure out the rest, or how long it took before she was ready to stand on her own feet. She still clung to her brother's arm like she was twelve again.

"...so the only ones with an alibi are Zirconium and Hex?" Five was saying.

"U-unless they were both in on it!" German yelled, pointing at Zirconium and the woman a step behind him.

Zirconium looked up at him, a strange look on his face. "Why?"

"You—" German struggled for a minute, his hands behind him death-gripping the safety rail—"Y-you're b-both The Malefactor!"

" 'The' usually means one," Five said slowly.

"It's all a r-ruse! E-everything's a ruse! Y-you... Y-You're all...!"

Hex walked right up to German and drove her knee into his stomach. He doubled over, his panicked wheezing giving way to reflexive coughing.

"Calm the hell down." She backed up, straightening her hair sticks. "Shouting accusations without solid evidence is going to get us nowhere."

"Besides, we don't even know that she didn't just trip and fall." Solo swallowed. "Those are pretty high heels for running around on the stairs, aren't they?"

Hex shook her head once. "Not possible. Look at her hands."

Although Utami hadn't been the one prompted, she turned her gaze back to Pear's corpse. Her hands were limp at her sides.

"Ah!" Lucky shouted, nearly falling backwards. "She didn't catch herself!"

Five adjusted his glasses. "How do you know that? Her hands look pretty messed up to me. She could have just moved her arms afterwards."

Utami was shaking her head before she even realized she had a point to bring up.

"Cera?" her brother prompted.

"Her neck..." She put her hands to her own neck, as if thinking about Pear's death too hard would snap her own. "She broke her neck when she fell... She wouldn't have been able to move her arms."

"So someone moved them for her?" Solo hooked his thumb under his belt. "Or she was moved entirely?"

"Did she even fall?" Hex rubbed her chin. "We need to do a more thorough analysis of the body. She could have just been beaten to death. I'm sure I can figure out some basics about the weapon if that's the case."

"That's great and all, but—" Five was cut off by a chiming sound.

 _Ding dong ding dong... Ding dong ding dong... Ding dong ding dong... Ding dong ding dong._

Utami blankly counted the bells as they came. Six.

Five looked like he had eaten something bitter. "...That. We're on a schedule here. We don't have time for a full investigation of death here, all right? I..." He looked down. "I know it's screwed up, okay? But we can't _all_ die, right? We don't want to, I mean?"

Zirconium squeezed Utami's hand. "No."

"We need to get to the [numbered doors], then," Hex said, backing up. "As long as we preserve the scene, there shouldn't be a problem. We have two doors, right, Solo?"

"Unexplored? Yeah. [3] and [5]. Of course, [Door 5] is..." He stared at the basement landing beyond Pear's body.

"I guess we'll have to take some extra precautions if we're going that way," Hex said with a nod.

"Are you _kidding_?!" German staggered back. "Who would go down th-there with...?!"

"I'm sure [Door 5] has something important behind it..." Lucky gripped his hands. "I could make my way down there..."

Five nodded. "Utami? How are you doing?"

"Huh?" She looked up at him. "How do you think I'm doing...?" She took in a few shallow breaths that she tried to make deeper. "I... I want to go through a door."

Some part of her wanted to contribute to the game... but mostly she wanted—needed—a task. Some way to get by with the bloody smell of Pear's dead body scorched into her nostrils.

Zirconium squeezed her hand again, looking her in the eye. "Which?"

Utami said...


	15. Door 5

"I can do [Door 5]... It's been waiting longer..."

Zirconium's eyebrows lifted. "You sure?"

Utami nodded, peering at the door to the basement past Pear's body. "If it's really an elevator, we'll have to all fit in there. I'm pretty small, so..."

"I can go with her." Five shuffled past some of the others towards the first step of the last stretch of stairs. "Lucky, I know you volunteered, but I don't know if you and Zirconium can both get in."

Lucky rubbed the back of his neck, looking at the blank wall next to him. "That's fine... I don't mind."

Hex straightened up, taking a step past Pear's body to the clean floor of the final landing. "So it'll be you, me, and Cera, then?"

[3+5+6=14  
1+4=5]

"Okay." Utami drifted towards the right handrail, her fingers falling away from her brother's palm. "Let's go, then."

As she began to descend, one heavy footfall at a time, the others discussed the number [3] door. There was no way for them to get through without any of the [Door 5] volunteers or one of the three broken bracelets.

"I don't think we've properly explored the fourth floor yet," Hex said. "All of you can check that out while we're busy."

"N-no way!" German backed up, his shoulders hitting the wall. "If we do that, you could come back to the body before us and mess with us! E-especially if you did it, Hex...!"

Hex put her hands on her hips. "Would you rather have all four of you sitting here staring at a dead body for an hour or so?"

"It's not like we can do any real analysis of the body, anyway," Five muttered. "Unless you guys found some sort of forensics lab?"

Lucky looked off to the side. "Not really..."

Utami clasped her hands together, looking at the ground. A bit of blood had gotten onto the bottom of her shoe, making faint tracks. "We've probably gotten all of the information out of the cadaver that we're going to. Let's just... mull it over while we go through the doors. Okay?"

"While you all go through the door," Solo responded. "Sounds fair to me." He shut his eyes. "We decided to get going, so let's get going. German?"

The boy with the [9] bracelet cast one more suspicious glance at Utami and the others before swallowing. "Y-yeah. Fine. Better than being alone."

Five frowned. "Which of us is going to jump _you_?"

"Hey." Hex jabbed her elbow into his stomach and turned to open the basement door. "If you're going to say something, make sure it's useful. We don't have time for playful banter."

"Harpy," Five muttered, rubbing his stomach as he yanked the door all the way open.

Utami followed Hex through, their footsteps echoing on the linoleum. Even with the door closing behind them, sealing off most of the scent of Pear's blood, the basement emanated an eerie chill. They would be leaving soon enough, though... Leaving both rooms behind...

Utami took a deep breath, lifting her hand to the RED by [Door 5]'s side. Hex verified next, then Five, who pulled the lever. It clicked, and the small door before them slid into the side of the wall with a tormented screech.

Hex covered her ears with a grimace. "I guess it's an elevator after all." She stepped inside without another word, stopping by the right side. Five and Utami followed, both hurrying to put their hands on the DEAD that covered any elevator buttons that may have been there. She didn't understand the sudden silence until she glimpsed the skull fading from her bracelet. Ah. That had been making the noise.

"Please tell me there's not supposed to be a puzzle in here." Ducking, Five shifted his shoulders, which were pressed against the far corner of the elevator. Utami was pinned against the other side, Hex pressing her arms to her sides in the middle.

The latter exhaled. "Have you never been in an elevator before, Five?"

"Excuse you?" His brow furrowed, making his scar buckle.

Before he could say anything else, a horrible screeching made Utami jump, banging the top of her head on some kind of metallic mesh.

"Shoot!" She rubbed her head as the accompanying clang faded. Thankfully, neither of the others commented as the door closed. A click and a whir, and the chamber gave a jolt that nearly took her off her feet again.

"Well, this feels safe." Five gripped the handrail on his left.

Hex straightened her hair sticks. "At least there's no gas pouring in."

Whether that statement had been too serious or the atmosphere from a few minutes ago had simply come back, the elevator fell quiet. Only the grinding of gears outside filled the air until the lift came to a stop. The same screech signaled the door reopening; being the closest, Utami leapt out before the opening had even reached its full width. Hex hurried after her, followed by Five.

"I don't suppose that elevator is going to let us back down," Hex said as the door began to close.

"There's no button to push." Utami watched the door slide, the inner half pulling out as the whole sheet of metal moved towards the other side. It shut with a clang after none of them interfered.

Hex swiped her hands past each other. "All right, the door's closed. Let's find the next one."

Utami nodded and turned away to look over the new room. Rows of lights overhead kept it all bright, reflecting off a wall full of windows that only showed a very shadowy area, a brick wall not far past the glass. Doors were on either side of the windows, but one was covered in metal that didn't look ready to unlock. The other walls were a white, painted like clouds, that gave way to the brick beneath them in the corners. It seemed like an intentional design. A small pane of glass separated a side room with a wooden door that mirrored the way out. The bulk of the room was taken up by three columns of two-person white desks. Each was equipped with two plastic chairs and two thick-monitored computers.

"It'll go faster if we split up," Five said. "Cera, you want to check out the doors?"

"Sure..."

Five was saying something else to Hex, but Utami was no longer listening as she drifted to the exit.

Pear... Pear... Had she really been killed? She couldn't have fallen down the stairs, but she could have fallen elsewhere and been moved... But why?

Why was any of this happening? Another [Nonary Game]... Dead body after dead body... What had any of them done to deserve this? What was the point of it? Who was The Malefactor? Who was responsible for these deaths? Why were they _dead_... Why, why, why...

The sudden crunching crash of breaking glass jerked her attention back outward. With an involuntary gasp, she turned on her foot, the thudding of her heart loud in her ears. There was a terrible choking sound just as she located Five and Hex. They stood together, Five in the back, gripping the sides of a computer monitor. Just in front of him, Hex lay back, slack against one of the tables, her thighs pressed against a keyboard and her torso only held up by the broken monitor around her head.

Five shifted his shoulders, twisting the monitor so that a jagged edge of glass widened the gushing gash across Hex's neck. With that, he pulled the computer back, allowing Hex to slouch away and slide to the floor. Some other remnants of glass clinked as she hit the ground, wires and bits of circuit board falling from her hair.

"Aah...aah...?"

External carotid artery. Just deep to the digastric muscle. Arising from the common carotid artery, straight from the aorta.

"He...x...?"

Delivers blood to the head and face at high pressures. Laceration could cause unconsciousness in as little as twenty seconds, followed by desanguination and death.

Utami's mind and senses continued to throw information at her, but she couldn't make any sense of it. She was at least able to tell when she collapsed to her knees, her hands stinging as they braced against the carpet. From somewhere far away, she heard her name, only just able to penetrate the thick fog of blood stench.

"Cera. If only you hadn't turned around..."

Near her, silhouetted against the lights of the ceiling, stood someone with curly hair. His jaw seemed to be moving.

"Oh, well. [3, 6, 9] was all I was worried about now that [2] has conveniently fallen out of the picture. Just look at it this way: no one can get out without me _or_ your brother. So you can rest easy as far as he's concerned."

Utami stared up at him, nothing but random syllables beating against her eardrums. Her... brother...

"What...?" Her throat was too raw to get out more than a hoarse murmur.

Five took a few steps back to where Hex lay, her blood staining her lovely blonde hair. He grabbed a handful of the cleaner locks by her forehead and dragged.

"It's a shame you figured out she killed Pear. Or, a shame you called her out on it."

Hex's body made a sick sliding sound as it drew nearer.

"I was too far away to stop her from attacking you."

He took Hex's hand gently and puppeted her fingers around one of the larger glass shards on the floor, the edge cutting into her palm and drawing what little blood remained there.

"You fought back, of course, but that only ended up doubling the casualties. Oh, what a tragedy. I'm lucky I didn't get caught in the crossfire."

The dragging came to a stop as he stepped onto the patch of carpet just in front of Utami.

"Goodbye."

She only managed to turn her head as Hex's hand came around, the thin glass biting across her neck. Utami gasped but found she couldn't draw in enough air as blood bubbled into her throat. Sharp lines of pain radiated from further to her left as the glass continued its course, and a warm cascade began down over her collarbone and soaking into her hood. The scent of blood—had she ever truly escaped it?—grew stronger and stronger until it blocked out every sense, leaving her to fall backwards into nothingness.

* * *

 **Congratulations! You have reached the [Broken Glass Ending].**


End file.
